


Anularius

by Lomonaaeren



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Horcruxes, M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-27
Updated: 2015-05-27
Packaged: 2018-03-09 09:10:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 61,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3244145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Traveling back in time is safe. All you have to do is keep away from people who affect time, who are pretty rare. It's just Horcrux-hunting Harry Potter's luck that Severus Snape is one of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Thunder of the Past

**Author's Note:**

> A late Advent fic for thebookivore, who gave me this prompt: _Harry/Snape. Time travelling Harry. As an unspeakable explains to Harry, time travel is actually very safe, because most people cannot affect the time stream except a rare few. You can tell who can affect time because they can see time travelers, otherwise "it's similar to how most Muggles cannot see magic, their minds naturally shy away from it and come up with the most incredible explanations for what they have seen". Harry knows to hide out from himself but doesn't realize that Snape can see him ..._
> 
> I meant to complete this fic on time for Advent, but it got too long for me to finish on time, so I’m posting it as a chaptered story. The title is Latin for “maker of rings.”

The Unspeakables were standing in a ring around Harry at first, all their wands pointed at him, chanting. Harry shut his eyes, and hoped that he didn't look as terrified as he bloody well felt, with the magic vibrating through him and concentrating itself in the small golden cross, ornamented with golden rings and rubies, that hung at his neck.  
  
Well, they would look like rubies until you got  _close,_ anyway.  
  
" _Trans tempum_ ," Harry made out from the chant, and then everything blended back together in a mushy mess of consonants, vowels, and Latin words that remained frustratingly just at the edge of intelligibility.  
  
Harry closed one hand into a fist and fought to remain calm. His breathing made his chest ache, or maybe that was the magic. The spiral of force above him had hopefully turned indigo and green by now, the colors that would indicate he was safely traveling back through time, but he didn't dare open his eyes and look.  
  
 _If you're going to find that last Horcrux, you have to be bold._ Hermione's voice echoed in his head.  
  
Harry snorted to himself, or he would have if he'd had the breath for it. Who would have thought Harry Potter would have problems with  _boldness_?  
  
But he did. The Unspeakables had reassured him that it would be safe for him to travel back to the early eighties and hunt for the last Horcrux, the one that they'd only known Voldemort had when a shadow of him had popped up against last year, because few people were the sort who mattered to history. Harry would have to stay away from his younger self, of course, and he would have to stay away from Dumbledore and important Ministry officials, but he could walk openly in Diagon Alley and Hogwarts around students and anywhere else that Voldemort might have hidden the bloody thing.  
  
Harry's hands closed harder around the cross. The Unspeakables hadn't been as easy about the prospect of him getting  _back_ to the present.  
  
And it was still just a guess what the Horcrux was, or where Voldemort had hidden it.  
  
*  
  
Hermione was the one who had got suspicious. The shadow of Voldemort hadn’t been recognizable as the man himself; instead, it had to do with a smudged shape on the walls in the houses of those who had Dark Marks, a trembling and troubling of dreams, a murder that had ended with the name MARVOLO scratched in blood on a wall. Harry had been a little shocked when he heard about that, but after all, other wizards had the name Marvolo. And someone could even have meant it as a tribute to Voldemort without it actually meaning that Voldemort was  _back_.  
  
But Hermione worked in the brand-new Department of Magic’s Shadow, which was a division of the Department of Mysteries that was trying to bring some of those mysteries into the light of day. It also did plenty of education programs, like “Why Werewolves Aren’t As Dangerous To Your Health As You Think They Are.” So Hermione knew lots of spells that were uncommon and potentially dangerous if used to put information into the wrong hands, but weren’t dangerous in and of themselves. And she’d used one of them to ask a question that could be answered with knowledge from the past alone, and then peered through time.  
  
Harry had woken from a hard slumber one night to find Hermione pounding on his door. He’d opened it and found her standing there, shaking, her hands clenched in her robes.  
  
He would never forget the words she had uttered, looking at him. “Voldemort had an eighth Horcrux.”  
  
*  
  
She had said that Voldemort's spirit, drifting around after his confrontation with Harry as a baby, had latched onto an object sometime in the eighties, somewhere in Britain. That object had apparently counted as a Horcrux because it had held a piece of Voldemort's soul.  
  
Not that that revealed what it had been, or where, or why exactly it had continued to function as a Horcrux after Voldemort's spirit left. Hermione could have pushed the spell further to try and answer her questions, but that would probably have killed her. Harry wanted his friend alive more than he wanted the exact answer. At least he had a set of parameters.  
  
And he was the only one who could make the journey. While he had no Horcrux left in him, he could use a kind of--echo, was the best that Harry could describe it to anyone else. Hermione said it sounded to her like the way a dolphin hunted, bouncing sounds off things. Harry could feel a slight, distant echo in the destroyed remains of the diary in Dumbledore’s ofice, and the same thing in the Sword of Gryffindor, although it had been the bane of Horcruxes instead of an actual one.  
  
So he had to be the one to go back, to find the Horcrux, and then return it to the present where they could destroy it, which would be easier than hunting down where it was in their time. Hermione was even afraid that it had been destroyed physically but not in the proper way sometime in the past, and so they might be hunting crumbled pieces instead if they let it go--  
  
Then the pain squeezed and clamped down on him, and Harry couldn't hide from what was happening anymore in thoughts of what he wanted to happen. He opened his eyes, and the light blazed through them, and he felt as though someone had picked him up and shaken him out like a rag, and he knew nothing more for a very long time.  
  
*  
  
Harry walked quietly, quickly, through the middle of a rain-splattered Diagon Alley. He hadn't seen it rain this hard there in a long time. The water leaped and skipped from the top of his head onto the cobbles, and ran in such puddles along the gutters that Harry thought even stepping into one of them would ruin his boots.  
  
He'd made it.  
  
He'd come to in the middle of a back alley near Diagon, and although things had seemed so much the same when he stepped out of the alley that he'd trembled a bit, the softly glowing rubies on the cross had reassured him. He only had to touch them, and they would tell him the time, whirling golden numbers that rose up in front of him and crossed the air.  
  
 _7:16 PM, August 3rd, 1983._  
  
Harry had still taken five minutes to adjust his breathing and straighten his shoulders before he stepped out of the alley, but if that was the worst he had to do on this trip back in time, he would be stunned.  
  
Most of the people in Diagon Alley seemed to be in the same state he was in: anonymous in huddled, hooded cloaks, their steps sloppy and their hunch resigned. Harry had no trouble fitting in as he steered through them, although he slowed as he approached the mouth of Knockturn Alley. Once he stepped into  _that,_ he could become the focus of dangerous attention, no matter how much he wanted to avoid it. Magical traps wouldn’t be fooled into ignoring him the way other people were.  
  
But he needed to get as close as he could to Borgin and Burkes. He thought it at least as likely a hiding place for the last Horcrux as Hogwarts. Tom Riddle had worked there; his spirit might have gone back to it as a familiar refuge. And surely Voldemort, even as a drifting ghost, would have wanted to hide in an object that had some worth or value, not any common stone or tree.  
  
Harry cast a few spells that deepened his shadow until it seemed to consume him and shade his face and added feelings of familiarity and bored contempt to the general unconcern most people regarded him with. The Unspeakables had told him  _most_ people should ignore him, based on the general ignorance of time travelers, but Harry couldn't help feeling paranoid.  
  
He moved slowly down the side of the alley towards Borgin and Burkes, his feet stomping along as if he had an errand that he hated. The spells or the circumstances of time travel or both worked out for him; eyes slid past him, and one woman who did look at him for a minute turned her head away with a visible yawn. Encouraged, Harry halted by the window of Borgin and Burkes, leaning one hand against the wall, and closed his eyes.  
  
The ability to locate the "echo" of a Horcrux had taken him three desperate weeks to perfect, but it would now infallibly tell him whether something was there or not. Harry dropped slowly into the center of his mind, the place he had only learned to find with intense Occlumency practice after the war, and then sent out what felt to him like a pulse of darkness and hatred and anger, the most intense emotions he remembered feeling from Voldemort through the scar.  
  
If this worked, he should feel an answering "call" of the same emotions.  
  
It worked, to his shock. The emotions bounced blazing back to him, and he felt almost as if a cold hand had reached out and touched him. Harry opened his eyes and stared blankly at the front door of the shop.  
  
He hadn't expected to find it on the first try any more than he had expected to destroy it with a touch. Harry shook his head in wonder and drew his wand. Well, he would have to go in and get it. And he would have to lay low anyone that got in his way, whether or not he wanted to. The object was near the door; it had to be to return such a strong echo. At least that meant he wouldn't have to go far inside, or cope with many traps that Borgin and Burke might have laid in.  
  
Before Harry could enact his plan, the door opened, and a black-swathed figure came out with a small bowl in his hand. Harry's gaze locked on it like a magnet. The echo was still swimming around him, and had got stronger when the door opened; this  _had_ to be the Horcrux!  
  
The bowl was shallow and made of tarnished silver, but Harry thought he could make out the heavy S of Salazar Slytherin on the side. Exultant, he muttered, " _Accio_ bowl." It would fly out of the hand of the buyer, and he would be left to stare around for a moment, then come up with some explanation that made sense to him, such as that he didn't like the bowl and had taken it back to the shop.  
  
Except, although the bowl began to move towards Harry, the purchaser spun sharply around and caught it. And he glared straight at Harry, and  _saw him._  
  
Harry didn't know how that could be, and he didn't have time to waste discovering the answer. He went in low and fast, slamming his shoulder into that of the Ministry official or disguised Lucius Malfoy or whoever it was. They hadn't expected brute force, Muggle tactics, instead of magic, and they went flying to the ground in front of him.  
  
Harry kicked out hard, striking the bowl from the figure's hand, and it bounced and rang on the cobblestones. Harry scooped it up with one free hand, ignoring the solid punch to his ribs from beneath him. He had borne worse pain than that.  
  
But the brief struggle had knocked his hood back, and when he turned his head, he met the familiar, piercing glance of horrid black eyes.  _Severus Snape. Shit. I didn't think he could change history...but of course he did._  
  
Harry leaped to his feet. But Snape had his wand now, and he lifted it, his gaze not even fixed on the bowl that Harry had tried to steal from him but on Harry's face.  
  
"Lily's eyes," he whispered, and then he Stunned Harry.  
  
As Harry keeled over with the bowl in his hand and no cushioning beneath his head, the only clear thought he had was,  _And here it was going so well_.


	2. Lily's Eyes

Harry woke slowly. He knew before he opened his eyes that his hands were bound behind his back and his legs to the legs of a chair. He had, unfortunately, been in this situation more than once. The years since the war had been Voldemort-free, for a little while, but they had hardly been quiet.  
  
“You need not keep still,” said an unexpectedly high-pitched voice from next to him. “I can tell when someone is feigning sleep.”  
  
Harry still took a moment to roll his neck and ease the tight muscles there before he opened his eyes. Whether Snape knew it or not, Harry had to be ready to move if he got the chance, and there was little more embarrassing than being brought down by a spasming muscle or something else stupid his body decided to do.  
  
He was in Snape’s quarters at Hogwarts. Even though he’d never seen the inside of them, Harry was sure of that. The thick stone walls couldn’t belong to anything but a room in the dungeons, and the fire that flickered damply off to the side was beneath a carved mantel with snakes crawling along it. It was the only elegant or pretty thing in the room, assuming that your taste in elegance ran to serpentine curves. The rest of the furniture was old and stained, or worn, in the case of the fabric couches. Harry wondered for a second whether Snape just liked squalor, or what, but then he caught a glimpse off to the side of a door that opened into a shining Potions lab.  
  
 _It’s not that he doesn’t care about cleanliness, he just spends his energy on it elsewhere,_ Harry thought, and finally turned, slowly, to look at the man who stood in front of him.  
  
Snape looked so young that Harry wanted to blink. In fact, he thought it at least possible that Snape might be younger than he was. He would be, what, twenty-three or twenty-four by now? And Harry was twenty-five.   
  
But his face was sharp enough, and the lines around his mouth and nose could probably cut. His hand tightened on his wand as he stared at Harry, and then he made a noise like a snarl and pressed forwards with the wand, stabbing into Harry’s throat and tilting his head back.  
  
Harry breathed through his nose, and made the best of it.  
  
“Who  _are_ you?” Snape whispered. “You have—you have her eyes…” For a second, his gaze dropped, but his wand never faltered. “Are you related to her?”  
  
“Yes,” Harry said, with perfect truth. The wand made speaking painful, but it would have made nodding more so.  
  
Snape leaned in until it seemed as if it was his nose and not his wand or the ropes pinning Harry to the chair. “ _Tell me how_ ,” he said in a rabid voice.  
  
“I’m her cousin,” said Harry. It was the vaguest term possible, and the safest. There was no way that he could tell Snape the truth. Merlin knew what he would do with it. “I never had any contact with her when she was alive, but I watched her from a distance sometimes.” Yes, this deception would work well, if he could pull it off. He paused, then added, “And you, too. You’re Severus Snape, aren’t you?”  
  
Snape pulled back with narrowed eyes, his body inclined as if he was about to cast a fire curse, a stance Harry recognized. Harry worked his hands together behind his back. His only chance if that happened was to turn and hope that the curse hit the ropes and the chair. At least enough for him to survive, that was.  
  
“You’re lying,” said Snape.  
  
 _Shit._ Harry should have remembered that it was easier for a Legilimens to detect lies. Since all Aurors now learned some Occlumency during their training, he had probably held out against any casual probing into his mind. But he had been looking Snape carelessly in the eye, and that had to stop.  
  
Looking away, Harry shrugged. “Believe what you want. But you don’t have the right to hold me prisoner here.”  
  
“Neither do you have any right to try to steal what I had rightfully  _bought_ , and knock me down in the middle of Knockturn Alley.” Snape swayed back a step. He was still watching him, and Harry’s skin prickled with the knowledge. He hated looking down when he should be looking  _up_ , meeting Snape’s eyes on an equal level. For now, though, this was the best thing. “Tell me what you wanted the bowl for.”  
  
 _At least it is a bowl._  Harry’s head was so full that he’d wondered if the bowl had been a real memory or a mistaken one. Right now, he bowed his head and sullenly churned his hands in the ropes, wondering if there was a way out.  
  
 _No_. Snape had not only conjured the ropes, he’d probably conjured the knots as well. It was what Harry would have done.   
  
“It used to belong to my family,” said Harry sullenly, and kept his head bowed.  
  
“The same family you share with Lily? The family of Slytherin?” Snape laughed for a second, and Harry thought he was genuinely amused, if only by the fact that Harry was continuing to lie. Then, abruptly, Snape surged forwards and grabbed Harry’s chin. “I tire of this. _Legilimens_.”  
  
 _Patience must be something he learned with bloody old age,_ Harry thought, panicked, and threw as much strength as he could into his rather pathetic Occlumency shields.  
  
They held for a second, and then buckled under Snape’s harsh onslaught. Harry could feel pieces of the truth spinning past him. His thoughts were so frantic that it seemed to be taking longer for Snape to pick up the relevant memories.  
  
Harry used that moment of grace as well as he could. He slammed his head forwards and into Snape’s chin, causing blinding pain to flood his face, and Snape staggered away with a muffled cry.  
  
Harry followed the blow with his body, spinning the chair as best as he could, hitting Snape’s legs and knocking him down again. That meant Harry fell as well, of course, but he had one big advantage. His tied fingers were near enough Snape’s dropped wand that he could grab hold of the shaft.  
  
Harry managed to grab it, by dint of straining and wriggling until he thought he might have sprained something in his wrist, and then he managed to wave the wand, too, and mutter, “ _Relashio_.”  
  
The ropes around his legs let go. The wand had probably been aimed more at them, after all, although his hands would have been more bloody  _useful_ , Harry thought, and rolled to the side as Snape tried to lash out at him with something. Harry had no idea whether it was a foot or a fist, and he wasn’t staying around to find out.   
  
The wand flew away from his hand.  
  
Harry’s legs were still free. He kicked himself away from the chair, turned so that his hands were gripping the edge of a table and could offer  _some_ help in keeping him upright, and hammered a kick at Snape’s knee.  
  
Snape leaped backwards out of the way. His eyes were alight in a way that Harry had never seen before, and Harry wondered for a moment if it was because he’d never seen Snape in the middle of a battle that wasn’t life and death. Maybe he would have looked like this when he dueled Lockhart in Harry’s second year, if Lockhart had been a worthy opponent.  
  
 _That’s the last thing you should be thinking about, idiot,_ Harry scolded himself harshly, and twisted smoothly out of the way of the next hex Snape fired.  
  
“You know that this can end only one way, when I am the only one armed with a wand,” Snape said in an almost coaxing voice, and pressed towards Harry. If his jaw hurt where Harry had hit him, it didn’t show in his voice. “If you calm down and tell me your secrets, I could be merciful. Anyone—anyone who might have a link to Lily is precious to me.” He paused for a moment. “And you were not lying when you said you were related to her. Only the other part of the story was a lie.”  
  
Harry fumbled behind him on the table with his hands, trying to use Snape’s words to cover the sound of his movements.  _Something_ should be there, had to be there, come on, come on, something he could throw, he would have something in hand in a second, and Snape might still be distracted with his mumbling…  
  
His hand closed on the handle of something. Harry whirled and tossed it at Snape half over his own shoulder.  
  
Snape let out an oath and fumbled for it, and Harry saw it was the silver bowl that had the S on the side, the bowl he had tried to take from Snape in the alley. Harry cursed. He  _needed_ that bowl.  
  
His panic flooded the room in what felt like a wordless burst of power, at least to him, and the bowl soared towards him from Snape’s hands. Harry caught the slight handle that curved out from the side in his teeth, and then began to run clumsily towards the door, calling now for his wand with the same wandless wish magic.  
  
It soared out of Snape’s lab, and Harry would have cheered if his mouth wasn’t occupied. He would get out of here!  
  
Then Snape grabbed the wand.  
  
Harry came to a halt, panting, not far from the door. He had the bowl, but it could be taken from him, and Snape had his wand. Harry didn’t dare leave it here. Who knew what Snape might be able to find out from a time traveler’s wand? And there was Dumbledore, too. If Snape took the wand to him and  _he_ analyzed it…  
  
Snape was studying Harry narrowly. Then he nodded. “I knew you had Auror training,” he said. “And I saw no reason to treat you kindly because of that, not after what the Aurors have done to me.” The bitterness in his voice was as shocking as raw ginger. “But it is more than that. You have been through a war.”  
  
Harry cursed to himself, and then turned and leaned the silver bowl on the door, twisting so that he cupped it between the door and his bound hands—which were really starting to ache. “Hasn’t everyone?” he asked. “I assume that  _most_ people know about Voldemort and fought against him at some point.”  
  
Snape gaped at him. Harry was about to add a sarcastic little aside about how Snape didn’t have any reason to forget the war this soon when Snape whispered, “You said his  _name_.”  
  
 _Shit._ If that was unusual in Harry’s time, it must be even more unusual two decades in the past, when so many wizards would be suffering from the wounds the Death Eaters had inflicted.  
  
“Who  _are_ you?” Snape demanded again, and this time he looked intrigued enough that Harry thought he would actually prefer an answer in words, rather than Legilimency.  
  
“I can’t tell you that,” said Harry, and shook his head when Snape opened his mouth again. “No, it doesn’t have anything to do with you not being  _able_ to read my mind. I’m sure you could. But this is important to the war. Let me go. I have to do things, and I won’t trouble you again as long as you let me take the bowl.”  
  
He thought that tactic would work with Snape. The man might be curious, but he also seemed to have a dislike of getting involved with anything he didn’t already know intimately. He had never shown any interest in getting Hufflepuffs or Ravenclaws in trouble, for instance; he already had the rivalry with Gryffindor to occupy him.  
  
But a second later, Harry realized that that tactic might have worked with the Snape he  _knew_. This one was ten years younger, and restless with it.  
  
“You’re talking like the war’s not ended,” said Snape, and in seconds he was right in front of Harry again, as close as he had been when Harry sat in the chair, but at least he wasn’t jabbing his wand into Harry’s throat this time. “Are you—” His voice went dead.  
  
Harry stared at him, only to find a disbelieving stare locked on him in return. He wondered what could have attracted Snape’s attention for a second, then realized. It was his forehead.  
  
 _Shit!_  Harry kicked out with one foot, intending to trip Snape up, knock him unconscious, get his wand back, and  _Obliviate_ the inconvenient bastard, but Snape, gaping or not, wasn’t that much of a fool. He stepped out of the way easily and said, “No,” with no breath behind his voice.  
  
“Right,” Harry said. “I can’t be here, and you can’t see me. Let me go. A lot more depends on this than—than I can explain.”  
  
Snape didn’t seem to hear him, this time, not even to react to or deny his words. He moved forwards and seized Harry’s head, bearing it back and brushing his fringe out of the way to see his scar at the same moment. Harry growled a little at the uncomfortable position. Snape might have been deaf, might have been blind, to everything but the faint line of the scar on Harry’s forehead in front of him.  
  
A second later, Snape pulled away and walked towards the corner of his room. He stood there with his hand on the mantel, looking lost.  
  
Harry cleared his throat uncomfortably. His hands hurt, and he wanted to find out if Snape was going to let him out or not. “Can you—well, can you let me go?”  
  
Snape shot him a baffled glance. “How should I do that?”  
  
“It’s called letting me out of these ropes and opening the door,” said Harry dryly. He couldn’t believe Snape was really that stupid. Taken off-guard, maybe.  
  
“No,” said Snape, turning around and folding his arms in a definitely unpromising way. “How can I let you go? You are Lily’s son. Her  _son_. Grown up and come back in some manner I don’t understand—” He blinked abruptly. “Come  _back_. A time traveler?”  
  
Harry cursed wearily. It seemed everything the Unspeakables had told him was going to be useless after all, and through no fault of his own. “Yes. Now, you  _understand_  why you have to let me go?” He gave Snape a pleading look.  
  
“No,” said Snape, and he spent a moment frowning at the floor, to the point that Harry wanted to kick him just to make Snape look up again and pay some attention to  _him and the circumstances._ But then Snape did look up, and his face was set in a way that made Harry think the extra attention might not be a good thing after all. “How could I let Lily’s son go into danger, having made the vow I did? You probably know about the vow,” he added.  
  
“Yes,” said Harry tightly. Of all the things he had thought he might have to deal with when Snape captured him, this was not one of them. “But I promise, time travel is safer than you think it is. And I came back searching for something, and the bowl is it. Since I already found it, I can leave soon.”  
  
“Really?” Snape cocked his head. “What are the chances that you ran into me by coincidence and the bowl is what you need? Besides, I need the bowl for my own research. We might as well conduct our research together.”  
  
Harry flexed his fingers. “Can you please take the ropes off?”  
  
“If you promise to stay put.”  
  
Harry grimaced again. Snape had probably already decided he was a Gryffindor and likely to keep his word—or maybe he just thought that Harry would do it since he was Lily’s son. Either way, he was right. “Fine. I promise.”  
  
Snape nodded and released his hands. Harry brought them around in front of him and began to massage them. Snape stood where he was, but his gaze was deeper and more thoughtful than before. “Why can we not conduct our research together? I will have more facilities than you do, if you came back in time without more preparation than this.”  
  
Harry hesitated for a second. He had actually intended to destroy the bowl, not research into its origin or capabilities, or bring it back to Hermione if he found it impossible to wreck it on his own. Still, he did have a potential place, now that he thought about it. “Do you know if, if I inherited something in my own time, the things I inherited would still recognize my claim to them now? There’s a house I own, that we could go to, and it’s standing empty, but I don’t know if it would be possible to get in.”  
  
“If you mean Lily’s house, it was partially destroyed,” said Snape.  
  
“My  _parents’_ house, you mean?” Harry stressed, and was rewarded with a grimace of Snape’s own. Yes, this Snape still hated his father as much as ever. He had probably only got along with Harry so far by carefully erasing all the features that reminded him of James and concentrating on Harry’s eyes. “The one in Godric’s Hollow? No, I know that.” He swallowed down a lump in his throat at the memory of going there during the original Horcrux hunt. “This is Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. Sirius’s house.”  
  
Snape went so still that it seemed as though he’d cast a Living Statue Spell on himself. Then he said in another raw, ugly tone, “So the murderer decided to leave everything to his godson when he finally perished in Azkaban?”  
  
Harry wanted to say something desperately, but he doubted he could alter Snape’s prejudice against Sirius, first of all, and for a second, he didn’t want to affect the timeline. He ended up shrugging. “It’s going to be useless if the house doesn’t recognize me.”  
  
Snape shut his eyes. “Was it Black’s decision to make you his heir?”  
  
He still spoke the name with a world of loathing, but he was getting past it. Harry sighed a little. In a way, it would have been much better if Snape’s loathing had convinced him to let Harry go and get on with researching the bowl by himself. “Yes.”  
  
“Then the house should recognize that you have the aura of his decision about you, if it still belongs to him in name,” said Snape, and gave a stiff motion of his shoulders that wasn’t a shrug. “As long as he still owns it in prison.”  
  
“He does.” Harry was sure of that. After all, Sirius hadn’t been cleared by the Ministry in fifth year, but he had managed to enter the house and give it to the Order of the Phoenix all the same. “And it would be secure.”  
  
“It would.” Snape spent a moment studying him with hooded eyes. “You haven’t told me what you hope to learn from the bowl.”  
  
Harry closed his hand into a fist. He wondered for a second how greatly the timeline would be affected if he did tell Snape about Horcruxes. He had known about them in the end. Would it matter so much if he learned the same knowledge a few years earlier in the future?  
  
 _Yes. Because he might be smart enough to figure out I am—was—one, and then Merlin knows what he’d do._ Harry was finding this Snape dangerously unpredictable, and not just because he was younger.  
  
“I can’t tell you that.”  
  
“Then perhaps I cannot let you have the bowl.”  
  
Harry rubbed his forehead. God, his scar hurt. He would be happy to let someone else take the burden of this, if anyone else could have. He would have liked to toss the problem of destroying the bowl in Snape’s lap and go back to traveling through time. To go home.  
  
“You can count on me not to reveal the information,” said Snape softly. Harry blinked his eyes open and focused on him. Snape was watching him with eyes that resembled some of the Unspeakables’, Harry thought, or Hermione’s. They were so eager for information, and so set against letting a bit of it out. “Who would ask me? Who would believe me? Who has to know, as long as no one else sees you here?”  
  
Harry shook his head restlessly. “You might not tell someone, but you would act differently if you knew.”  
  
“Differently enough to change history?”  
  
Harry nodded. “I think so. And I can’t take the chance.”  
  
“You will have to.”  
  
Harry snarled at him, balked. “How can you stand there and look so  _patient?_ You should be dying to get rid of me, or hurt me, or something! Do anything you can to get me to go away! Aren’t I the image of James?”  
  
Snape’s face paled for a moment, and his jaw did clench, but then he said, “No. Perhaps I think that—might think that—in the future, based on years of brooding about what you look like. But right now, you are the image of Lily’s son who went through a war.”   
  
Harry stared at the floor. He would just have to hope that he could either  _Obliviate_ Snape afterwards or that the knowledge wouldn’t affect the timeline. One of the Unspeakables had a theory that any changes that  _were_ caused would be erased gently by the motion of time itself, like waves washing out marks on a sandy beach. Harry hoped that was true.  
  
“This is one of the artifacts Voldemort left behind to make himself immortal,” he said carefully, watching Snape’s face. “I need to destroy it, and I need special means to do so.”  
  
Snape stood looking at him with his hand on his left forearm. Then he nodded and said, “After I have done my research, I will help you destroy it. In the meantime, we should make haste to this house of yours. I cannot hide you in my rooms forever.”  
  
 _Only Snape would make it sound as if he was granting me some kind of favor, when he was the one who kidnapped me in the first place,_ Harry thought sourly. He didn’t like this, neither having Snape help him nor the time delay in the destruction of the Horcrux, but he reckoned it was the best deal he was going to get.  
  
The careful way Snape watched him as he fetched his wand and went to the door, and the way he insisted on carrying the bowl himself, said that, yes, it was.


	3. Research At Its Finest

 

A special note for this chapter: In canon, I know Walburga didn't die until 1985. However, I've played around with the timeline for this story, and she's already in portrait form.

Harry had to close his eyes to disguise the relief he felt when he tentatively stepped up to the door of Grimmauld Place and extended his hand, and the wards snapped into being, then faded instead of stinging him. It was the first thing that had gone right since he came back in time, he thought, and touched his wand to the lock. It creaked and moved back, and Harry stepped carefully through the slowly opening door.

"If no one else is here, why are you being so careful?" Snape asked from behind him.

Harry nodded in acknowledgment, but he said, "The Blacks were rather paranoid. It would be just like them to leave a trap or something that could take some intruders out."

"I thought you said you  _knew_ Black." Snape's sneer was muffled. Harry looked back at him once, turning from his careful study of the entrance hall once he'd determined there were no traps right here, and found Snape standing with his hand on his wand, his eyes darting in several different directions.

_Wise of him,_ Harry acknowledged, and faced forwards again. He knew what would happen the moment he raised a lot of light, and he wasn't looking forward to it. "I do—did. In my own time. But the house was rather different then. I didn't come here for the first time until long after Sirius had disarmed whatever traps were waiting."

Snape drew in a sharp breath, and Harry was sure he wanted to ask all sorts of questions. He didn't, though, because Harry didn't give him the chance. Instead, he sharply called up the light from a  _Lumos_ Charm and moved away from the door.

Two things happened at once. The less alarming one was the springing-up of a huge cloud of dust in front of him, thick and grey enough to make both Harry and Snape cough.

The second was a shriek so loud and long that it made Harry snap his head backwards. " _DEFILERS OF MY HOME!_ "

"What the fuck is that?" Snape asked, as the shriek died down and the second one began. Harry didn't listen to it. Something about blood traitors and Mudbloods. He knew all the words by heart already.

"That's Sirius's mother," Harry told him. For a moment, he felt a sharp flash of amusement that Snape had sworn. Then he swore at himself. He had entirely neglected the possibility that Walburga or someone else might still be alive and watching over the house.

On the other hand, the wards probably wouldn't have let him in if she was alive, and so it proved when they came around the corner. The familiar portrait was hanging, uncovered, in the middle of the entrance hall, and it began shrieking again on seeing them.

"STRANGERS! TRAITORS! FILTH! _"_

"Almost I don't blame Black for running away from home," Snape muttered behind Harry.

Harry muffled a hasty laugh in his sleeve, because really, that would be all they needed, Snape bristling at him and having another argument about Sirius. "She's something, all right," he said, and he waved his wand. The spell he had learned only last month to disable noisy portraits formed and spread across the surface of the picture, making a nest of spider webbing. Walburga shrieked in retaliation, but the sound was only a tenth of what it had been.

"That will keep her quiet for long enough that we can get some work done," said Harry, turning around to face Snape. "That is, if you'll tell me exactly what you plan to  _do_ with the bowl." He had just realized that that hadn't been a point of discussion. Harry shook his head. Hermione should have found a Slytherin with the ability to detect Horcruxes and sent them on this mission instead.

Snape was watching him with solemn, intent eyes. "I've never seen that spell before," he said.

"Surprise, new things have been invented in the future," said Harry dryly, and gestured up the stairs. "The library is up there." He nodded to the side. "The kitchen is over there. If there's a functional Potions lab in the house, I don't know about it. I don't think one was ever set up. What kind of research do you need to do?"

"The library has a flat surface?" Snape shifted the bowl from one hand to the other.

Harry shrugged and nodded. "Or there's a table in the attic no one is using. We can float that in."

"Of course no one is using it," Snape muttered, but he seemed to be trying to keep his sarcasm to himself, for which Harry was grateful. He had enough problems without that. "My research is into whether certain gifts can be passed on by lateral inheritance instead of vertical."

"My congratulations on your fluency in Incomprehensible," said Harry, leading the way up the stairs. "English this time?"

"I am investigating," said Snape, his voice dipping to an arctic level, "whether I can acquire Parseltongue from an artifact of Slytherin's, rather than by being his blood descendant."

Harry thought for a second about telling Snape he was a Parselmouth, but he decided to reserve that for the moment. It might allow him to understand some of the research Snape was doing if he tried to keep it secret. "All right. Does the bowl contain something that's going to help you with that?" They'd reached the library. Harry carefully cast a few spells that ought to banish most of the dust, and opened the door.

Snape didn't get the chance to do more than sneer a word. A shrieking, arm-waving shape was suddenly in front of them, yelling in such a high-pitched way Harry couldn't even distinguish words, the way he had with Walburga. He stumbled back in front of it, and it pursued him, now hitting him with small fists.

"No filthy Mudbloods is to be disturbing  _Master Regulus's rest!_ "

A second later, Harry realized who it must be. He stood as tall as he could and said in a cold voice, "And what about the one appointed heir by Sirius Black, Kreacher?  _Stand still_."

Kreacher was frozen in a moment, his eyes so wide with surprise Harry wouldn't have been surprised to see him faint. But maybe he got over it faster than that, or maybe house-elves didn't faint. He stood there and stared back and forth from Harry, to Snape, to Harry, to Snape, and then suddenly collapsed on the floor and started sobbing.

Harry looked around curiously for a moment, wondering if events had gone differently than he'd thought they had in the past and Regulus had died in the house or something. But he couldn't see any sign of a body.

"Get that ridiculous house-elf out of the way," said Snape, gruff.

Harry's lips twitched as he nodded to Kreacher. Snape either would have kept his thoughts to himself in the future, or he would have expressed them as scalpels designed to scrape away the skin of the people who heard them. "Get out of the way, Kreacher. We need the library to work."

Kreacher went on staring. He lifted one hand as though he would touch Harry's sleeve, but all Harry had to do was glare, and he shrank away again. Harry shrugged off the thought of guilt. Yes, Hermione would be aghast if she found out the way he had treated Kreacher, But Hermione wasn't here, and he was sure she would rather he get cooperation out of Kreacher than argue with Kreacher about it.

_Well, at least I'm_ fairly  _sure about it._

"Here," said Harry, and nodded at Kreacher while he Summoned the table from the attic. "Clear up this dust."

Kreacher bowed, still looking shocked, and snapped his fingers. The dust fled from all surfaces in a few seconds, and this time didn't puff up and hit Harry and Snape in the face the way it had when they walked through the door. Instead, it coalesced into the middle of an enormous ball in the air, and began tumbling over very fast in a way that reminded Harry irresistibly of a Muggle dryer. In seconds, the dust began to turn into tiny flecks, and then it dissipated altogether. That left only Kreacher, who stood there and stared and stared. Harry arched one eyebrow at him. "Go clean up the kitchen. We'll want something to eat later."

"Master," said Kreacher, who had apparently decided that some orders to obey were better than no orders, and he bowed and vanished. Harry snorted a little and turned to open the library door so that the table could get in.

Snape moved out of the way, but his eyes were locked on Harry, smoldering with a low light that made Harry glance at him curiously. "What?" he added, and danced the table into the middle of the room and carefully positioned it how he wanted it. "Are you going to need clean cloth, water, candles, anything like that, to study the bowl properly?"

"I have the materials I need with me," said Snape. His eyes were still locked on Harry, and he moved off to the side—not to set the bowl down, as Harry had first thought, but as if he had to look at him, as if he couldn't believe his eyes. "You are different than I expected."

Harry shrugged. "I can't believe you thought I would come back to this time. How many expectations could you have?"

"I did not mean different from the Harry Potter of this time," said Snape. His flicking hand gesture dismissed the boy presumably living with his relatives at the moment irrelevant. "I meant the man I thought you were when I confronted you in my rooms." Finally, he turned around, pulled a blue cloth patterned with golden stars from his pocket, and put it on the table, angled so the corners of the cloth faced the corners of the table.

Harry thought about asking, but managed to restrain himself, even though he wanted to. He stood there and watched calmly as Snape set the bowl in the center of the cloth, and then took out a vial of what could have been a crystal-clear potion or just water. Snape tilted the vial back and forth several times, and a thread of scarlet unfolded in the middle of the water. Harry lifted an impressed eyebrow. He had no idea what potion it could be. Maybe it was one Snape had invented himself. He was good at inventing spells, why not potions?

"Aren't you going to  _ask_?"

Harry folded his arms and found himself grinning as he leaned against the wall. "You're a lot more volatile than you were when I knew you," he said happily.

Snape glared at him. "When I dropped such obvious bait, I did it so you would  _ask_." He uncorked the vial and poured the now softly red liquid over the bowl. Harry almost opened his mouth to speak, but he thought it wouldn't really harm the Horcrux nature of the bowl. And if it did, well, bully for him.

"Really? I thought you dropped it so I would ask and you could have the pleasure of telling me I can't ask too much, because that would ruin the timeline."

Snape's hand flexed on the edge of the cloth, but he appeared to have decided to ignore Harry for the moment. Instead, he bent his head down near the silver bowl and said something, a soft word Harry couldn't make out. The only reason he didn't think it was an incantation was a lack of wand movements.

There was a bang and shudder that made Harry flinch, until he realized it had only happened in the bowl. When he could see again, he saw Salazar Slytherin's head—it had to be, since it matched the depiction of him in the Chamber of Secrets—floating above the bowl.

The eyes of the ghost, or spirit, or reflection, or whatever it was, turned slowly back and forth around the room. Harry wondered idly if he was surprised to find himself summoned in a place that didn't look like the Chamber of Secrets or a Slytherin house.

Then the spirit turned back to Snape. "Who are you who call me forth?" he whispered. Harry heard the sharp hisses along the side of his words, and wondered for a second if Snape could fully understand him.

Either Snape did or he was capable of guessing the general sense of the words. He gave a short bow and said, "Severus Snape, Head of Slytherin House at Hogwarts."

Slytherin's eyes blinked as slowly as a lizard's. "This…is not Hogwarts."

"No," Snape agreed, gazing at Slytherin. His expression was strange. Harry couldn't begin to guess what he was feeling. He tried to think about what he would feel if he met Godric Gryffindor, but he wasn't sure it was the same. He thought Snape's commitment to revering his particular Founder was probably a lot deeper. "I need your help in the matter of becoming a Parselmouth, however."

Slytherin's neck began to swell. It reminded Harry of the way a cobra's neck would puff up when it was getting ready to attack. Harry moved his arm and dropped his wand subtly into his hand. He didn't like the looks of this.

"You  _dare_ ," said Slytherin.

Snape looked at him blankly.

"You dare to summon me when you are not my descendant?" Slytherin's ghost parted his lips, and there were long, slender fangs there instead of human teeth, and a forked tongue flickering between them. "You  _dare_ to summon me without proper appeasement?"

Snape's mouth opened. Harry  _just knew_ he was going to ask about proper appeasement, instead of worrying about how the hell he would survive whatever Slytherin was getting ready to spit at him.

Then Slytherin's mouth opened wider, and Harry was out of time to worry or be amused. He had to move, and he did, sprinting across the room and shoving Snape to the floor as he kicked the table with all his strength.

It made tingles race up his leg and hurt his hip, but it also knocked the bowl from its firm stand on the table and the cloth, which Harry knew was the important thing. The table wavered, rocked, and almost fell over; the cloth twisted, and the bowl spilled. In a second, the ghost of Slytherin's head had vanished.

He  _did_ have time to spit one more jet of what looked like dark, gleaming oil. Harry spun to lift his arm and get the full brunt of the splash on his shoulder. He grunted, but it had all landed on his cloak and robes. He quickly whipped the cloak off, because it bubbled like it was acid and would eat through in a second, and then cast a spell which would clean the robes.

When he turned around, Snape was staring up at him from the floor with big eyes that turned to narrow ones the minute he noticed Harry looking at him.

"I suppose that happens sometimes," said Harry, as lightly as he could, and held out his hand to help Snape up. "Are you all right?"

"I didn't ask you to be a hero on my behalf," said Snape stiffly as he took Harry's arm. He seemed inclined to lie there, so Harry hauled him up. Snape gave him a faint, considering look as if he had learned something important from that, like how strong Harry was.

"You're right," Harry agreed. "You didn't ask me to do that. It was my idea."

That got him another stare. Harry shook his head and turned back to consider the mess in front of them. The table had a scorch mark in the center of it, and sparks had tattered the cloth. The bowl itself had a small dent in its side. Harry picked it up, hoping it hadn't been too battered for Snape's research. He doubted such minor damage could affect the nature of a Horcrux.

"I wonder what he meant about proper appeasement," Harry muttered, and then extended the bowl to Snape, who was already reaching a hand out to take it.

Snape snatched up the bowl and cradled it close to him. Harry only raised an eyebrow at him and turned to right the table. The cloth he'd leave for Snape. He would probably contaminate it with all his Potter germs if he touched it.

"You understood him," said Snape.

"Um," Harry said, and glanced back at him. "Appeasement and even vengeful spirits aren't only concepts that Slytherins understand, you know."

Snape smiled. It was a nasty smile, one that scraped and hurt at the edges of Harry's mind. "No. But it  _is_ interesting you understood the last words he spoke, given that I did not. They were in Parseltongue." He shuffled the bowl from one arm to another and stepped close enough that Harry found himself trapped against the table when he would have moved. "Who  _are_ you?"

"I told you the first time," said Harry, and glared at him. "What, are you going to disbelieve me now? What kind of other theory would fit all the facts I gave you? And these?" He tapped the skin beside his eyes.

"And the scar," Snape agreed. His voice was low, and he was still smiling, but he hadn't drawn his wand. He didn't have to, Harry admitted. He was threatening enough without it. "I want you to tell me more about yourself."

Harry laughed at him. "What? And ruin the timeline?  _No_. You could torture me, and I wouldn't break. And it's not things you  _need_ to know to live your life or anything."

"No," said Snape, without changing the inflection or tone of his voice in the slightest. "Gryffindors don't break under torture, do they? But I will withhold the bowl from you until you tell me."

Harry smiled back. "And you don't think I can take it if I want?" He'd come close to taking it the first time he saw Snape in Knockturn Alley, after all. He thought Snape was being a fool to demand this of him. He had made enough sacrifices in his life for things that were a lot less important than protecting history in a pristine state, after all.

Snape twisted his head to the side, his mouth a slash in his face, and Harry remembered abruptly,  _He was older when he made those sacrifices._

"I can cast a spell on it that would burn your hand off if you touched it," said Snape quietly. "And you won't be able to undo it."

Harry snarled at him, and shoved him away so he could move more into the center of the room. Snape went with the shove, but his eyes were fixed and unwavering. Harry stalked towards him in a way he hoped  _would_ make Snape draw his wand. He wanted to duel, wanted to strike back and get this boiling restlessness inside out. Merlin, he tried being nice to the bastard and it  _still_ got thrown back in his face.

Snape twisted lightly to the side, and said, "I wish to know."

"I don't wish to tell you," Harry said, and cast a nonverbal Summoning Charm at the bowl while staring so hard at Snape that the git ought to miss the real target of Harry's spell.

He did, but the bowl only flew a short distance from his wrist before banging back against it. He'd conjured a leather tie that curved through one of the handles on the side of the bowl and bound it to him, Harry thought. He cursed. He should have done the same thing when he was holding the bowl a while ago. Or just taken off and started running out the front door. It would probably have exactly the same level of utility in being able to destroy the Horcrux.

"Come," said Snape, his voice low and coaxing, and different, now, from any other time Harry had heard it. "Surely obliging me with an account of your ability to speak Parseltongue is not such a  _hard_ bargain. Information only is not such a price."

"It is when you'll react to the information and use it to change the timeline," Harry said bitterly, pivoting to face Snape.

"What if I said I would not?" There was a note in Snape's voice Harry hadn't heard before, and he studied Snape mistrustfully. There was nothing visible on his face except a demented helpfulness, though. He stepped forwards, stretching out one hand as though he was gesturing the way to a brighter future for both of them. "If I could grant you the security of knowing the one person aware of your presence in this time would never tell?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "Short of promising to take out all your memories of this time and store them in a Pensieve, you can't do that."

Snape paused and stared at him. "How did you know that." It wasn't a question.

"Well, anyway," said Harry, "all someone has to do is get into the Pensieve, and then they know." He hoped the prickling heat he could feel creeping up the back of his neck wasn't breaking out in a vivid blush all over his face, the way it probably was. "There's no absolute safety. I only told you this much because I need the bowl."

Snape smiled at him. "But you did. That means it's not an absolute rule. You might as well bend the rules a little more."

Harry groaned and rubbed his face with one hand. He wanted to, he could admit that. If only to make things easier for himself and startle the piss out of Snape with some of the things he was going to hear about his future self. He'd probably mostly want to hear about that.

But those weren't good motivations. And what was Harry going to do when Snape asked if he survived the war? Surely he would, once he heard there had been a second war and he had served as a spy during it.

"What else can you do?" Snape asked reasonably. "One more bargain, then: I will help you destroy the bowl."

Harry peered at him suspiciously around his fingers. "I know  _I'll_ keep my word, but what guarantee do I have that  _you_  will?"

"A bargain step-by-step, then?" Snape offered. "I tell you one thing about the bowl and how to destroy it in exchange for one piece of information."

Harry grunted. He supposed that was the fairest he would get, and it would at least make sure that Snape didn't run off with the bowl the instant Harry was done talking.

"You  _know_ it's a good trade," said Snape, impatience snapping and sparking in his voice like a firework.

"Fine." Harry folded his arms and gave Snape an unimpressed look. "If you violate the bargain, then you're going to wish you hadn't."

Snape smiled eagerly at him.

"And you won't tell anyone else," said Harry. "I can  _wager_ that even if you're fast enough to keep me from removing the information from your brain, not everyone else will be."

Snape paused, then shrugged. "True enough. And there are few that I'd want to share this information with."

"What about Dumbledore?" Harry asked. That was his main fear. Snape might not know many other people who could change history, but Harry was bloody sure Dumbledore could.

Snape sneered at him. "I'm truly anxious to hear what you have to say about  _him_ , if you think that I would tell him something like this."

Harry hesitated one more time, wondering if he was the one who had caused that attitude towards Dumbledore, and then reminded himself that he'd only been back in the past for a few hours. It wasn't even midnight yet. "All right. One piece of information for a piece." He paused again and eyed Snape's hold on the bowl. "I suppose I go first?"

"For a Gryffindor," said Snape, and leaned back against the table, "you are not unintelligent."

 


	4. A Bargain Piece-By-Piece

“I want to know how you grew up the way you did.”  
  
 _That_ question threw Harry for a loop. He had expected Snape to ask about Dumbledore, after what he had said about being eager to hear about him. He blinked and leaned against the table. “What?”  
  
“You are refusing to answer the question?” Snape’s voice had gone soft again, but instead of signaling an insult the way it would in the classroom, Harry thought this was just a prelude to a challenge. And indeed, Snape’s hand was already straying to his own wand.  
  
“ _Merlin_. No.” Harry sighed and dropped his head forwards, rubbing hard in the middle of his brow with one hand. He wished Hermione had been the one able to sense a Horcrux and come back. Maybe, if they’d waited long enough, she could have invented a method. “I just don’t understand it.”  
  
“A not uncommon problem, it seems,” said Snape, but when Harry looked up, ready to glare, Snape was smiling at him. The sight was so bizarre that Harry had hardly recovered before Snape launched into an explanation. “You seem to be war-hardened. More than your training as an Auror. It’s in the way you look around a room, the way you check behind you for threats, and the way you always notice where my wand is and what it’s doing.”  
  
Harry blinked. “That really has nothing to do with the way I grew up. That’s the war and Death Eaters. I can tell you—”  
  
“Do not give me a load of bollocks.” Snape sounded serious enough that Harry was able to control the urge to laugh hysterically at the word he’d used. “Those reflexes are years ingrained. Your childhood must have given them to you.”  
  
“The  _war_ was my childhood,” said Harry quietly. “Or it ate it, I don’t know which. I was facing Voldemort from the time I was eleven years old.”  
  
Snape tensed up so hard that it looked as though he was going to break. “That is impossible,” he whispered. “He could not have come back.”  
  
“He sort of possessed someone,” said Harry. “I mean, he couldn’t really. His spirit was too broken. But a piece of his spirit was there.” He gave the bowl on the table a significant glance, and Snape followed his gaze.  
  
“This, then, contains a part of his spirit, too?” Snape’s voice was so low that it was difficult for Harry to make out the exact words. But the way his hand went out to caress the side of the bowl said what he meant.  
  
Harry opened his mouth to confirm that, and then frowned and closed it again. It was occurring to him that he’d given away a lot of answers to a lot of questions, and Snape hadn’t told him  _one_ thing worth having yet. “My turn. Do you know a way to cast and safely control Fiendfyre?”  
  
Snape looked as though Harry had smacked him across the face. “You intended to use  _that_ on the bowl?”  
  
“Yeah,” Harry said, and shrugged when Snape glared at him. “It’s the best thing to do. But I only saw someone use it once, and it completely destroyed the room it was burning in. All I could do was flee from it. So, do you know a way to control it? I reckon there must be a way to put Fiendfyre out, or no one would ever use it at all.”  
  
“No one sane uses it,” Snape said, and then took a deep breath and nodded. “I know a way to surround it with walls of a magical ice that will melt when the fire touches them and put it out. But they need to be very  _powerfully_ magical. You know ordinary water has no effect on Fiendfyre.”  
  
“Great,” said Harry, pleased that one problem he had thought he’d have to research was solved. “What’s the incantation?”  
  
Snape gave him another smile and answered with a question the way Harry had. “What do you mean when you say that you had to fight the Dark Lord?” His voice sank a little, as if even speaking Voldemort’s title pissed him off. “Why was Dumbledore or the Order of the Phoenix not somewhere on the front lines against him?”  
  
Harry had to grin a little, as he realized that this time he was telling Snape nothing he didn’t already know. “That prophecy you overheard part of.”  
  
Snape shivered and snapped up as though he was going to breathe fire, and Harry felt a little bad for the flippant tone he’d spoken that information in. But only a little. He was getting used to the fact that the past was the past, but this was still the same man who’d been spying for Voldemort at the time. And he had got Harry’s parents killed.  
  
Harry wouldn’t exactly carry a grudge, but he saw no reason to make it really easy for Snape either.  
  
“The prophecy was real, then,” Snape whispered. “And it meant that you had to face him alone?”  
  
Having him think that was preferable to him knowing all the details. On the other hand, Harry didn’t think he was good enough a liar to pull off the claim of complete solitude. He hesitated instead, then shook his head. “I had lots of help. But usually when I was facing him, I was alone in some way.”  
  
Snape was staring at him in shock. “I’m amazed you survived.”  
  
“So am I, sometimes,” Harry agreed. “The incantation?” They would have to find some place other than Number Twelve to cast the spells, of course; Harry didn’t want to cause damaged carpets that would have no explanation in the future, although he supposed it was possible Kreacher might clean them up between now and then.  
  
“Yes, of course,” Snape muttered, still with a preoccupied look on his face. “It’s  _Aqua et ignis_.”  
  
There was a sudden wavering in the air around them, and walls of blue ice reared up, as high as the walls, soaking the carpets. Harry whipped out his wand and snapped, “ _Finite Incantatem!_ ” The ice was gone in a second, before it could do any more damage, and Harry shot Snape a dark look as he cleaned up some of the stains with efficient motions of his wand. The spell was really meant for use on blood or some of the similar liquids that flowed in the veins of the magical horrors Dark wizards bred, but it worked equally well here. “ _Idiot_.”  
  
Snape would ordinarily have flared up at the insult. In fact, Harry found it harder to imagine a version of Severus Snape that wouldn’t than Snape seemed to have found it to imagine his survival.  
  
But Snape only looked at him as if in a dream and asked, “What role did I have in the war?”  
  
Harry swallowed, thought about protesting that once again he had answered a couple of Snape’s questions before he asked for the incantation, and then said, “You were a spy for Dumbledore. You saved me and protected me, several times. And Dumbledore entrusted you with information that he wouldn’t have given anyone else.”  
  
“I did it for  _him_?” Snape looked a little stupefied. “Not for Lily?”  
  
“That’s a question I don’t know the answer to,” Harry reminded him. “And I want to know what the wand movements for the water spell were.”  
  
“You didn’t see me cast it?” Snape was focused on him again, but even more unnervingly this time, his eyes fastened to Harry’s face as if he thought the person he was building Harry up in his head to be would never have missed something so simple.   
  
“One I do know,” Harry said. “No. And stop unbalancing the game. That’s four questions you’ve asked me to my one.”  
  
Snape opened his mouth as if he would dispute the maths, then shrugged and moved his hand in slow, regular motions through the pattern of the casting. Harry watched him closely, and nodded when he thought he had it right. He was tremendously relieved that Snape hadn’t spoken the incantation again, at least.  
  
“Okay,” Harry said. “Now, I want to know why you’re so insistent on possessing Parseltongue for yourself.” Technically he had most of the information he wanted now that he knew how to keep some Fiendfyre from spreading, but he was curious about other things, and Merlin knew Snape wouldn’t stop asking questions, so Harry might as well use his remaining queries to his advantage.  
  
“How can you ask?” Snape made a gesture with one hand that Harry supposed was meant to be eloquent, but  _he_ certainly didn’t pick up on the meaning.  
  
“Five questions,” Harry said. “Gryffindor, remember? And it got me laughed at in the corridors and people whispered that I was—evil.” No need to tell Snape specifically about the Heir of Slytherin business. “Now, did you really just want to be the next evil incarnation of blood purity, or what?” That would be a laugh, now he knew Snape was a half-blood.  
  
“No,” said Snape, and his face became haughty and austere, as though Harry had accused him of some sexual sin. “Of course not.” He looked at the bowl, his gaze distant again, although Harry thought that at least this time he was seeing something connected with it and not something that had more to do with Harry himself.   
  
“I wanted to be in possession of secrets that no one else had,” Snape whispered. “Once, I wanted to possess other things. Like Lily’s friendship, for example.” He glanced at Harry, who had winced despite himself at the mention of his mother’s name. “I know you might not think it, because of what happened to her, but we were friends. Once.”  
  
Harry just nodded. No need to tell Snape he had already known that, or exactly  _how_ he knew.  
  
“But that possession passed from me,” Snape whispered. “Then I wanted grace and superiority that no one else had, and I thought rising high in the Dark Lord’s service would gain me that.” He touched his left forearm and swallowed. “Then I treasured Potions secrets, potions that I would be the only one to know how to brew. But I quickly learned that that knowledge came to me too easily, and I was bored by it.” He shrugged a little. “Parseltongue is so rare that learning the secret of it would guarantee me entrance to an exclusive club.”  
  
“Huh,” said Harry, not sure whether he should be amused or revolted. It was a very Slytherin motivation, he had to admit that.   
  
Then again, he had wanted some Slytherin things in his time, hadn’t he? At one time, even the wish that Dudley and his gang would leave him alone had seemed like a rare and impossible ambition.  
  
Harry shook away that vision and muttered, “Fine. But—”  
  
“Then I met you,” Snape said, and his gaze snapped back from that distance and focused on Harry in a  _really extraordinarily creepy_ way. “And I realized there were more Parselmouths around than I thought.” He stepped closer to Harry, staring at him.  
  
Harry thought about reaching for his wand, but he supposed Snape still counted, right now, as his ally. He fumbled around for his voice, though, and found it. “I think that’s close enough, Snape.”  
  
Snape paused, then said in a low voice, “Whatever betrayals I may have committed in the future, I haven’t done them now.” And his hand closed the distance between them and rested against Harry’s face for a moment. Harry jumped in spite of himself. He hadn’t really felt Snape’s hands often, mostly just when Snape grabbed at his shoulder to turn him around and march him to detention or something. But he had thought, or would have if he had ever turned his thoughts to the matter, that they would be cold.  
  
Snape’s hand burned as though he was sick.  
  
 _That’s it, of course,_ Harry thought a second later, relieved beyond measure.  _He has a fever. It isn’t fair to question him like this when he’s sick._ He opened his mouth to tell Snape that they could go on later, when he was well.  
  
But Snape said only, “I wonder. Is it the eyes? Them plus the Parseltongue? The knowledge that you’re a time traveler, and can tell me that the world survived at least that long even with the Dark Lord’s return?” He took another step nearer. “The knowledge I can read in your reflexes that you survived an incredibly hard childhood? I would have sworn that no one’s childhood was harder than mine.” He sounded soft, absorbed. “I was fascinated with Lily, but I envied her. Her parents were kind to her, and loved her. That is something I never had.”  
  
“Snape—”  
  
“This is probably a bad idea,” Snape said, and except for the way his tone was so conversational and his eyes were fixed like a fanatic’s on Harry’s face, Harry actually would have said he was talking to himself. “But, on the other hand, if it goes wrong, you will not be in this time permanently. And I can remove the memories and store them in a Pensieve. And I meant what I said about wanting to have things no one else has had. At least, no one else in this time.”  
  
“Are you feverish, or just deranged?” Harry demanded, a little aghast. It sounded as though Snape was plotting to kill him and hide the body. “Do you know what damage you could do to the timeline, you git—”  
  
Snape kissed him.  
  
At least, Harry supposed it had to be called that. It wasn’t really like any other kiss he’d had. Snape didn’t brush or lean in and stick his tongue out. He just pressed, and then stepped back and looked at Harry thoughtfully, as though he’d had to taste some Potions ingredient to make sure it was doing as it was supposed to.  
  
“You  _are_ deranged,” said Harry, when he could get his breath back. “What the fuck was  _that_ for?”  
  
“Well, as I explained a moment ago, I am not sure,” Snape admitted, with a detached calm that Harry found just as creepy as all his unexpected emotions and reactions. “I am attracted to you, and it could be for a number of reasons. It was distracting me, though. I decided to do something about it.”  
  
Harry shook his head and shut his eyes as hard as he could. When he opened them again, then maybe this strange Snape would be gone.  
  
But Snape was still standing there when Harry opened his eyes, and Harry couldn’t take his gaze from his. Snape was contemplating him with a long, patient glance that saw too bloody much, in Harry’s opinion. He reached out and slowly slid his thin hand up Harry’s cheek, and Harry, paralyzed by those eyes, didn’t even see the touch coming until it was too late. Then he hunched his shoulders and ducked defensively, making Snape chuckle softly.  
  
“No one has ever done that to you before?” Snape asked. He sounded pleased. At least he had taken his stupid hand back.  
  
“I’ve been kissed plenty of times before,” said Harry, and his tongue ran away with him before he could stop himself. At least he had the incantation he needed to destroy the bowl now, and if he and Snape were to duel, he was sure he could beat him. He nearly had before, when he didn’t even have his wand in hand. “But by  _women_ , and not by people who weren’t in love with my mum and hated my dad!”  
  
Snape blinked for a moment. “I’m not sure that I was ever in love with Lily, you know,” he said. “I was too wrapped up in her. I thought about what she meant to me. I contemplated her future and talents. But it’s not the sort of love that I could recognize in others.” He paused, and his jaw at least clenched, which meant, as far as Harry was concerned, that  _something_ was normal around here. “Even the love that your father bore her…as hard as it is for me to admit that.”  
  
“Look,” Harry snapped, “I didn’t come here to play your therapist.”  
  
“Really?” Snape moved a stalking step closer. “What about lover, then?”  
  
Harry felt as though someone had dipped him in ice water. By the time he could get his tongue unstuck from the extreme shock and respond, Snape was already chuckling softly to himself.  
  
“It was worth watching your face to say that,” said Snape.  
  
Harry shut his eyes and closed his hand on his wand. “Look, I don’t want to ask you any more questions,” he said. “I’ve got what I came for. Why don’t you ask me what you want to, and we’ll say that this is over, and you can do what you need to do with the bowl, and I’ll take it the instant you’re done?” As far as he was concerned, that was the fairest distribution, and he would be done with Snape as well as the Horcrux after that.  
  
Hermione had told him that she thought he could return home the minute he had destroyed the Horcrux. It was for the best, because that way he wouldn’t come in sight of someone who could recognize him and alter the timeline.  
  
“I have a lot more questions, though,” said Snape pensively, and Harry opened his eyes and tensed again as Snape stepped up to him. “Such as why you were the one chosen to come back and hunt this, when you’d already done your part in the war, and you must have fulfilled the prophecy.”  
  
“Because I’m the one who has the most experience with Voldemort’s artifacts,” said Harry promptly. He thought he had already given more than enough information about this, but if Snape wanted to ask about that and not about more personal and bloody stupid things, then Harry was all for it. “I went on a hunt for them. I personally destroyed one when I was at Hogwarts.” Best not to say “second year,” lest even that give Snape too much information. “I should recognize one when I find it.”  
  
Snape nodded while barely moving his head. “And you will leave the instant you destroy the bowl.”  
  
“That’s right,” Harry said. “There’s no reason for me to stay.”  
  
Snape sucked in a deep, harsh breath and moved his hand restlessly. Harry winced. “See why you shouldn’t have kissed me?” he muttered, hoping he could turn this into a joke and ease the situation that way, by making Snape angry if he couldn’t make him laugh. “It always leads to regrets in the morning.”  
  
“The regrets that I may have are not the kind you think they are,” Snape said, and gave him another searching look. “Why did you accept my help with this?”  
  
“Because you had the bowl,” Harry said. “I did try to take it twice, remember.” It seemed to him that Snape was forgetting too quickly not only about what Harry’s dad had done to him in the past but also what Harry had done in the past, oh, two hours.  
  
“Right, of course,” Snape said. His face was deep in contemplation. He nodded. “Can one teach Parseltongue? By magic or otherwise?”  
  
“Uh, I don’t think so,” said Harry. “The only other Parselmouths I ever heard of were Salazar Slytherin and Voldemort.” Snape flinched at the name, but minutely. Harry shrugged. “One of my friends managed to hiss a word in Parseltongue once, but it was only because he’d heard me doing it. It was imitation, not really learning it.”  
  
“Even that might be useful.” Snape gave him a level look. “Teach me a word.”  
  
Harry sighed. “This is getting further and further away from the bowl, remember? You wanted to research it and I wanted to destroy it.”  
  
“Teach me what my name sounds like in Parseltongue,” said Snape. “It would be useful to know in case the Dark Lord ever hisses it at me.”  
  
Harry sighed again. “As long as we can get back to the bowl.”  
  
Snape nodded. His eyes were unmoving now, on Harry’s face as if Harry was the only one who could tell him his fate. Well, Harry supposed he was, but he had no intention of telling him, anyway. He knew what it was like to live with the notion that your life had a definite limit and due date. He didn’t want to inflict the experience on anyone else.  
  
“Do you want your full name, or your last name, or what?” Harry asked, when a full minute had passed and Snape still seemed content to stand there and gaze at him.  
  
“My full name,” said Snape, after what seemed to be a period of judicious consideration. Or Harry hoped it was that, anyway, and not just another minute of silence. “The Dark Lord will probably use that.”  
  
 _He doesn’t seem to be scared of Voldemort at all right now,_ Harry thought in wonder, and then grimaced a little.  _Of course, he’s also acting mental, so that shouldn’t reassure me._  
  
“All right.” Harry closed his eyes and fixed the image of a snake in his mind. Of course, it was the snake that he had seen on the faucet that opened to reveal the Chamber of Secrets, because Slytherin was rather on his mind lately. But that was okay. It wasn’t like he ever had to tell Snape. “ _Severus Snape_.”  
  
Snape hissed as if in mockery, but when Harry opened his eyes and checked on him suspiciously, he saw he was pale instead. Harry nodded in sympathy. He got that. Parseltongue had to sound pretty frightening and unnatural the first time you heard it after not hearing it for a while, and your own name would be worse.  
  
“Again,” Snape breathed. “It’s a hard language to learn, isn’t it? All those twisting sibilants.”  
  
Harry wanted to shrug and say that it sounded like English to him, but he concentrated on the snake instead, and hissed the name again. This time, Snape nodded, and said, “Once more should do it, I think. Repeated memories are easy to play over again and study in a Pensieve, instead of one that only lasts a moment.”  
  
“ _All_ of your memories of me ought to go into the Pensieve,” Harry muttered. He just hoped that he wasn’t changing history irretrievably. On the other hand, at least two Unspeakables had told him that time travel wouldn’t affect the past  _or_ the future if the people who could change history took certain actions in secret: only destroyed hidden objects, hid their memories, and things like that. That was one reason Harry could go back and destroy a Horcrux no one else knew about. And he remembered how good Snape had been at spying and deceiving people. If he could keep the secret of his friendship with Harry’s mum, why not one like this?  
  
“Perhaps they will.” Snape’s face was motionless and tranquil.  
  
Harry hissed the name again. Snape moved towards him like a high-stepping deer, or his doe Patronus, Harry thought—the comparison was irresistible—his face almost glowing. Harry didn’t really want to think about the reasons why.  
  
“Good,” said Snape at last. “Now. The only experiment that I knew for sure to force Slytherin’s spirit to manifest did not work. We will have to return to Hogwarts and do some more research.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes a little. “So you will just hide me in your rooms?”  
  
“In some ways, a tempting prospect,” said Snape, and picked up the bowl. Harry decided he was going to pretend he hadn’t heard that. “But no. There are places you can go as long as you don’t draw the attention of someone like myself.”  
  
 _At least he’s right about that,_ Harry thought in irritation as he followed Snape down the corridor.  _Like Hogsmeade. I’ll use Disillusionment Charms, if I have to._  
  
Snape cast another contemplative glance at him. Harry looked away and awkwardly cleared his throat.  
  
Of course, pretending certain things hadn’t happened was a lot easier for him than for Snape, when the poor bastard was  _dead_ back in Harry’s time. With that in mind, Harry decided he could forgive some things.   
  
 _Although it’s still disconcerting to have his eyes on me like that._


	5. Back to Hogwarts

“What am I supposed to do? I can’t stay in your rooms all the time,” said Harry, and turned around from the bookshelf behind him when Snape didn’t answer. He supposed he could force the issue if he had to, but he would prefer to avoid that.  
  
Snape was holding a book that looked as if it was about to fall to pieces and frowning at something inside it. When he met Harry’s eyes, though, he smiled abruptly, and his hands snapped the book shut and tucked it out of sight in a broad pocket of his robes. Harry narrowed his eyes.  
  
“Oh,  _that’s_ not suspicious,” he said, and angled his head to the side. He couldn’t catch a glimpse of the cover, but the way Snape instinctively moved to hide it confirmed his suspicions. He would bet good Galleons that that book had to do with him, and time, rather than with Snape’s research.  
  
Harry sighed, and ignored the way that Snape remained neutral in response. “You’re not going to figure out a way to make me tell you more than I already did. What I’ve told you is dangerous enough to the timeline.”  
  
“I wasn’t looking for a way to force you,” said Snape. “I do have Legilimency at my disposal if I wanted to force you—something I suspect you already knew.”  
  
Harry thought of the way he had pushed out with his whirling thoughts to force Snape away from his mind, and concealed a shudder. He said, “Well, what do you want, then?”  
  
“For now? Silence.” Snape moved towards a door on the other side of his quarters that Harry more than suspected led to a lab. “I wish to brew. And you might consider why you were so lucky as to stumble on a Horcrux immediately after coming to this time. That seems to me even more of a coincidence than your running into me, one of the few people who could actually react to your presence.”  
  
Harry stared after him. “What do you mean?” he called out, but Snape turned and gave him a glare severe enough that he abruptly seemed  _far_ too reminiscent of the Snape Harry knew. Harry took a step back, raising his hands.  
  
“The silence I asked for,” Snape said, ominously, and closed the door behind him.  
  
Harry rolled his eyes and sank down on the couch in the middle of the outer room, one hand fiddling with the golden cross around his neck, the artifact that had let him travel in time and would get him back when he was done. For a minute, he thought he felt unusual heat to the red jewels, but it faded as he touched it. Harry relaxed. He had hoped that the things he told Snape wouldn’t make the cross dissolve in a blast of thunder and light, stranding him here forever, but he honestly hadn’t been sure.  
  
 _What else could a Horcrux be?_ If Harry had randomly decided that the bowl with Slytherin’s symbol on the side had to be a Horcrux, like the locket, he would have understood the insinuation, but he did have a way of sensing the Horcrux, and there was simply no way that resonance could be mistaken.  
  
But because he wanted to humor Snape more than for any other reason, Harry spent a moment concentrating, and sent out the “call” to the Horcrux that he had when he first arrived.  
  
The call barely had time to roll away from him. Harry nodded with a sigh. Yes, it was the bowl. If the change in the bowl’s position—on the table on the other side of the room—had changed the sense of the call, then maybe he would have agreed with Snape, but as it was, it just wasn’t possible. This was what he had to work with, and that meant he  _would_ work with it.  
  
So. What did he do from here?  
  
Harry considered, for a moment, simply destroying the bowl and then vanishing from this time before Snape could do anything about it. It probably wouldn’t change anything. After all, Snape hated him anyway. That might make his hatred more bitter, deeper, and maybe Harry’s memories would alter in consequence, but so what? That was the sort of thing Harry had come back in time preparing to put up with.  
  
But Harry had made a promise, and he knew Snape was even more paranoid than the typical Slytherin. Of course he’d have put some spell on the bowl to alert him if Harry was about to take off.  
  
Harry leaned back thoughtfully on the couch and looked at the bowl. Well, it couldn’t hurt to check, could it? It would be  _stupid_ if it turned out that he was risking the fate of the world on nothing but an assumption. He muttered a detection spell and waved it lazily in the bowl’s direction.  
  
The spells that lit up around it in response were enough to make Snape’s office look as if it was suffering from an infestation of Weasley fireworks. Harry put his hand over his eyes, squinting, and the door of the Potions lab opened.  
  
“I believe that I requested silence,” said Snape. He bore a pair of black gloves and something squirming in the middle of them, so restless that it looked more like a living thing than the blob of liquid tissue that Harry thought it really was. Harry averted his gaze, swallowing against the temptation to strike the offending thing from Snape’s hands.  
  
“I cast nonverbally,” said Harry. “Sorry if you were disturbed by the light show.”  
  
Snape paused, and then shut the lab door again. Harry blinked. Well. That was the easiest he’d ever got rid of him. He ought to remember—  
  
Well, no. He had nothing to  _remember_ , did he. After all, Snape was dead in his own timeline, which was the only reason that Hermione had thought this journey advisable to make at all. So many of the significant people who could see Harry would be dead, and although Hermione had cautioned him that he could still damage the timeline, the chances would be less because he was coming back into a world where the effects of their lives had—stopped.  
  
Harry shook his head and leaned back with a sigh. He was going to think again about the timeline and whether he had done any damage to it, because he needed to, and because it was simpler than thinking about—well, what Snape had done to him in Grimmauld Place.  
  
 _A kiss. It was a kiss. You can think about it that way. What are you, twelve?_  
  
Harry snorted. No, he was an adult, and he could face adult problems. He had only traveled back in time to save the world from the greatest Dark Lord it had ever known, after all.  
  
Then the lab door opened, and Snape came back out, sitting down near the table that Harry had knocked into earlier that day. Harry stared blankly at him. He didn’t have the gloves on now and he wasn’t holding the squirming black thing, but those were the only differences.  
  
“I had not yet reached a point in my brewing so delicate that I could not interrupt it,” said Snape, as if that made sense.  
  
“I still didn’t make any noise,” Harry snapped. “I only cast a spell that—”  
  
“Revealed the charms I had placed on the bowl as protection against Gryffindor treachery?” Snape interrupted smoothly. “Yes, I know. And that still counts as something you weren’t supposed to be doing, something that broke into my concentration.”  
  
“So sorry, Your Majesty,” said Harry. “You know, if you want some reassurance that you matter to me, you still make me angrier than almost anyone I’ve ever met.”  
  
Snape eased up a little in his leaning posture. “You can’t fear me, though,” he said. “Or you wouldn’t speak so often in such phrases designed to irritate me.”  
  
“Not my fault if you so often got irritated by the truth,” Harry said. “I used to glare at you all the time, though, before I realized that you could use Legilimency.” And it probably wasn’t a good idea to meet Snape’s eyes so squarely now, he realized a second later. He glanced pointedly away, aware of Snape’s low chuckle.  
  
“I don’t know why I ever bothered with the game of questions,” said Snape, and stretched, or so Harry thought, from the motion he saw in the corner of his eye. Confident that he would recognize Snape reaching for his wand, Harry continued to look away. “You tell me more than you did then, simply by blurting out the truth the instant it comes to mind.”  
  
That was probably true, but Harry told himself, again, that he didn’t know exactly how this would affect the timeline, and he could gamble a bit, and Snape would most likely put all the memories in a Pensieve anyway. Or he’d probably already done that, hadn’t he, because he hadn’t reacted any differently to Harry in his own time? So this couldn’t damage the past, and Harry would take the chance even if it could, because destroying all the Horcruxes and preventing Voldemort’s rise again was more important.  
  
“You’re different.”  
  
Harry turned around again. “Different from the boy that you don’t have the chance to know yet? Yeah, I can believe that.”  
  
“Different from others I have known.” Snape was gazing at him in a sort of strange, staring way, as if he saw past Harry and into other times and places. Well, that was all to the good, as far as Harry was concerned. That meant Snape wouldn’t see  _him_ , and wouldn’t do the things that could prove really dangerous to the future. “None of them exercised this much fascination on me. Only Potions has ever done so.”  
  
Suddenly he sat upright in his chair, and there was no doubt he was seeing  _Harry_ again, even if it was with a dangerous flush on his cheeks and his hand also dangerously near to his wand. “You have not enchanted me?” he demanded in a low voice.   
  
“To, what, want me?” Harry rolled his eyes. “Yes, because I enjoyed that kiss you forced on me so much.”  
  
“I did not force it on you.” Snape was biting his words off short in a familiar manner. Harry was astonished by how much irritation could still coil in his gut. Well, he’d been telling Snape the truth when he said those rows with him were still among his most annoying memories. Voldemort had been worse than annoying, and Malfoy had caused him lots of aggravation, but Snape had been in between them both, a menace that Harry had to deal with every day instead of only at the end of each year.  
  
“Believe me,” said Harry, “and I have no problem telling you this, because you would only figure it out anyway, I would  _never_ do anything like that. I have enough people clamoring for my attention and assuring me that I’m the only one who understands them and—and wanting to kiss me.” It was still so stupidly difficult to talk about, his face burned. “People regularly tried to feed me food poisoned with Amortentia. I would never cast a spell like that on someone else.”  
  
Snape went on watching him, but he had eased his hand back from his wand. A second later, he nodded, and a smirk took its place on his lips. “Then I wonder if you resist me because you don’t understand the level of your own fascination with the kiss?”  
  
“There is no  _level of fascination_.” Harry wanted to wave his hand and banish this whole stupid conversation, but no matter how good his wandless magic got, he knew he wouldn’t be able to do that. “Listen. I appreciate what you’ve done for me, now and in the future, but that sort of thing is  _not_ going to be part of our relationship.”  
  
“I certainly hope not, in the future,” said Snape. “But now, here, I find you interesting. Why not talk to me about it?”  
  
“Because I have to find you interesting back, maybe?” Harry snapped. “In a different way than I do?”  
  
Snape smiled faintly, and nodded. Then he turned to face the bowl. “The potion that you interrupted was an Insight Draft,” he murmured. “One that would give me some idea of which of the many theories I have on how to summon and soothe Slytherin’s spirit—”  
  
“Listen to you with the sibilants.”  
  
The tightening of Snape’s shoulders was the only sign that the man had heard him. “Which one would work,” he continued firmly. “It won’t tell me the right answer, but it would clear up the confusion swirling in my head.” He glanced over his shoulder at Harry. “Since you interrupted it, then you’ll help me continue the research process.”  
  
“How?” Harry dragged himself out of the couch, only aware now of the weariness dragging at his limbs.  
  
“In the morning,” said Snape. He looked fairly fresh, himself, but then, Harry had no idea what his summer schedule was like, and  _he_ hadn’t traveled in time, fought someone twice, saved that same person’s life, and nearly damaged the timeline all in one evening. “I’ll Transfigure the couch into a second bed.”  
  
Harry nodded and closed his eyes. He could feel the transformation taking place behind him, but he was too tired to watch it for right now. When it had finished, he turned, ready to tumble into place on the new bed and hope Snape would drape blankets over him after he’d passed out.  
  
But Snape’s hand caught his arm and held him upright for a second. Harry opened hazy eyes, and saw Snape staring at him.  
  
“If I could figure out what about you fascinated me,” Snape said, and again it was if he was talking to himself, “then I could know what kind of questions to ask. You represent a wonderful opportunity. How many people get the chance to talk with someone from the future?”  
  
Harry had to snort, but at least that was a little more familiar, Snape talking about how he could use Harry. Harry didn’t think he needed to worry about Snape doing something stupid or horrendously damaging as long as he was talking like that.  
  
“Most people would know better than to ask,” Harry muttered, and dropped straight down, on the theory that there should be something there to catch him, at least as big and soft as the original couch.  
  
It was a lot bigger and softer, honestly, and Harry rolled over with a sigh. Sheets or something like them crinkled underneath him, and then something heavy and warm draped over him. Harry reached out and caught the edge of the blanket, dragging it closer.  
  
“Some people would give up the chance,” Snape said, as if agreeing. His hand skimmed down Harry’s shoulder and the back of his neck, into his hair. Harry sighed. He was so far gone, so suddenly, that he didn’t care about that.   
  
He would have wondered if Snape had cast some sort of spell on him to make him rest, but, well, it wouldn’t harm him. And he was sure, now, that Snape wouldn’t try something Darker, if only because he wanted to hear what Harry would say.   
  
“I’m not one of them,” Snape whispered, against his ear. “I want to know what makes you so fascinating, and I  _will_ get answers before you leave. Or you won’t leave.”  
  
 _And that should really worry me,_ Harry thought.  _He sounds like he could be as crazy as Voldemort, except Voldemort would have kept me here to torture me, and Snape…_  
  
Snape’s hand was still on the back of his neck. It didn’t move even when Harry could feel himself slipping towards sleep. He assumed that it would go away at some point in the future, that Snape wouldn’t stand here for the rest of the night being ridiculous and holding onto his neck.  
  
But the warmth of that large hand seemed to follow him into his dreams nevertheless.  
  
*  
  
“I didn’t realize you had a guest, of course, or I wouldn’t have come through the Floo so abruptly.”  
  
Harry tensed. He thought that voice would bring him out of a slumber a hundred times as deep. He whirled around and sat up until he was in danger of falling off the couch, or bed, or whatever it was right now, and the blanket was dangling around him. At least he hadn’t taken his clothes off last night.  
  
Dumbledore stood in front of the fireplace, one hand still wiping the soot off his lavender-and-magenta robes, his smile gentle and his eyes as bright as they had been when he was alive—  
  
In Harry’s time. Harry corrected that assumption and clung to it. For some reason, it had been easy for him to adapt to Snape being alive and roll with it instead of constantly leaping in shock. Maybe it was because this younger Snape was so different from the one Harry had known.   
  
But Dumbledore looked the same as always, not even younger the way he had in Tom Riddle’s memories, and Harry could feel the sharp ache, the yearning, as he looked at him. He wanted to hug him and talk about all the things that had happened since King’s Cross. He wanted to drop Ariana’s name, or Grindlewald’s, and see how he reacted.  
  
He had to look away, his chest rebounding with conflicting emotions, and Snape stepped smoothly into the gap.  
  
“I know you would have, Headmaster.” His voice was casual, and he cast a Drying Charm on his hair that made Harry wonder if he had come from the lab and a Potions accident. “As it happens, this is a guest you would have had to know about eventually. Harry—”  
  
Harry tensed a little, unhappily. He supposed that Snape had to reveal his presence in Hogwarts to Dumbledore, but who knew what  _this_ would do to the timeline?  
  
“—Cantor,” Snape said, sounding a little apologetic, as if he knew the name would mean nothing to Dumbledore and was worried about it. “A neighbor of mine, once upon a time. I didn’t know he was a wizard when we were children.” He looked over and caught Harry’s eyes, and Harry thought it preferable to look into them rather than into Dumbledore’s. After all, Snape wasn’t the only accomplished Legilimens in the room. “And I didn’t know he would become my lover when we met again.”  
  
Dumbledore’s eyes widened. Harry could see that much before he buried his head in his hands and raked his fingers through his hair. It was probably a good idea to keep his head bowed so Dumbledore couldn’t see the scar, the one identifiable telltale, he decided.  
  
That was with the distant rational part of his brain, the only one that could think properly through the  _burning humiliation._  
  
“Ah—yes,” said Dumbledore. Harry could feel something settle on his shoulder, and knew it was a hand, and was also sure that it wouldn’t be Dumbledore’s. “Well. I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Cantor, although I am curious why you didn’t go to Hogwarts.”  
  
“My parents moved to the States for a while,” Harry muttered, using a lie he had perfected several times when he had to play a role for the Aurors. He couldn’t fake a true American accent, but he could use a voice that sounded a little less like his own, which he did now. “They didn’t know I was a wizard, either, until the letter came over there.” He looked up at Dumbledore and shrugged a little. “And, well, they decided that they would rather have me go to school nearby than in England.”  
  
“Understandable, understandable,” Dumbledore murmured. His face was afire with curiosity, Harry knew, because he’d seen that expression before, but his eyes were more on Snape than Harry. Of course, Snape was the one he must know as untouchable and isolated. He would wonder what the hell had happened.  
  
“We reconnected a short time ago,” said Snape, without moving his hand from Harry’s shoulder, and Harry could hear the glee in his voice at a lie that was also the truth. “He reminded me of the past.” His hand tightened again as Dumbledore looked Harry in the eye. Harry ducked his head as if embarrassed, knowing the conclusions Dumbledore would draw, that Snape was encouraging him to draw. It would probably be the eyes that had attracted Snape to “Harry Cantor” in the first place.  
  
And it made sense that Harry could have eyes similar to Lily’s, if he lived near her, the way Snape had as a child. They might be related.  
  
“Tell me, Mr. Cantor,” said Dumbledore, and there was a little thrill in his voice that might only be curiosity, and might be something more. Harry felt a wistful tug on his heart. Dumbledore had been so good at that, tricking confidences out of people, getting them to trust him, but it hadn’t all been a lie, either. “Did you know a woman called Lily Evans? You look a lot like her,” he added, as if in apology.  
  
Snape’s breath stuttered. Harry shook his head. Truth, again. He hadn’t really  _known_ his mum. “Severus has told me about her,” he said. The first name seemed to stick in his mouth, but he hoped Dumbledore would think that was only the humiliation of being caught in Snape’s rooms like this. “I left too young to know her, though.”  
  
“Ah, pity,” said Dumbledore, and waved a hand as if he was dismissing both the circumstance and the question he had asked Harry. “She was a brilliant witch.”  
  
“That’s what Severus has said, sir.” Harry forced himself to lean back, to rest his head on Snape’s arm and smile as innocently as he could. His cheeks were still red, but that was from Snape’s little announcement as much as any discomfort with the situation.  
  
As soon as Dumbledore was gone, he was going to  _punch_ Snape.  
  
“It’s nice to see young love,” said Dumbledore, and then nodded to Snape. “Severus, if I could borrow you for a moment…”  
  
He led Snape over to the side and started to mutter to him. Harry strained his ears a bit as he lay back down and pretended to cover up with the blanket, and heard the single word “Dark.” He smiled a bit grimly. Dumbledore had probably sensed the Horcrux coming into the school and wondered what it was. He’d leave it up to Snape to spin the lies on that one. He was the most convincing liar in the room.  
  
Right now, it did seem as if the lie was going to spare Dumbledore from connecting Harry with a time traveler. But Harry still disliked it.  
  
As he lay there, brain whirling while he tried to will his body to relax, he decided he understood one reason that Snape might have given that lie rather than one about Harry being his friend, or a Potions collaborator, or even just someone he was speaking to on a matter of business. Snape had said that he wanted to know the source of his own fascination, and he was going to keep Harry there until he knew.   
  
Everyone would expect them to be together if they were lovers. They could move freely around Hogwarts, and elsewhere, as long as they avoided some of the other people who could change history and might be suspicious of the lie, like some of the other Death Eaters.  
  
Harry closed his eyes with a groan. Yes, it would work. No, he didn’t have to like it.  
  
“Something wrong, Mr. Cantor?” Dumbledore’s voice was gentle.  
  
“He often has a headache in the mornings,” said Snape. “We stay up late, talking, and I’m afraid… _indulge_ in more Firewhisky than we should.”  
  
His tone said all too well what other sorts of indulgences he had in mind. Harry rolled over and glared, only to find Snape standing behind Dumbledore’s shoulder, looking at him with delighted, intelligent, piercing eyes.   
  
If Harry had to go along with this for right now, he would. But he was going to get Snape back for this later.  
  
After all, he might already have damaged the timeline with his information. What more harm could a punch do?


	6. Wrong Horcrux

“So,” said Harry, shaking out his stinging hand, “you still need to tell me what you mean about it being a  _coincidence_ that I should discover the artifact I wanted to find the moment I came back in time.”  
  
He made his voice as pleasant as he could, and for long moments, Snape stared at him with his hand splayed across his nose as though he thought Harry would go mental again any moment. Well, at least that was what Harry thought he was thinking. He was no Legilimens, to read people’s true thoughts out from behind their eyes, but it must have seemed strange for Snape to turn around and have Harry punch him the minute Dumbledore left.  
  
Snape had his chance to get angry. Harry was looking forward to it, honestly. His hand was right beside his wand, and he was sure that he could draw and duel faster than Snape when he had access to it. And maybe then Snape would finally give up on these equally mental plans to get closer to him and tell people they were lovers and all the rest of it.  
  
But instead, Snape lowered his hand from his bloody nose and performed a quiet  _Episkey_ on it. Then he said, “Merely that it seems strange, no matter how good you are at sensing the presence of these things, for you to stumble across them right away. How did you know to go to Borgin and Burkes? How high are the chances that you would sense something I had just bought and it would prove the answer?”  
  
“I went to Borgin and Burkes because Voldemort likes artifacts, and he worked there at one point.” Harry kept an eye on Snape, but eased up on the hold he had on his wand. It seemed, disappointingly, that Snape was still more invested in his bloody strange mindset about Harry being his lover than he was in getting revenge. “It makes sense that he would go back, as a spirit, to the shop and bury himself in something else.”  
  
“It might make sense,” said Snape, and he sneered a little, which was such a comforting and familiar sight Harry would have tried to hug him, except it would have made him get the wrong idea. “ _If the Dark Lord were sane_. And that still doesn’t mean that he would want to tie himself to that particular bowl.”   
  
He turned and looked at the silver bowl with longing eyes. Harry snorted. “Admit it. You’re invested in not destroying the thing just because you want Salazar Slytherin to teach you Parseltongue.”  
  
“Of course I want it,” Snape said, and narrowed his eyes at him, before a slight smile appeared on his face. “I see no point in admitting to a false desire.”  
  
Harry wrapped his hands around his wand again, and glanced away. “I still have to destroy it.”  
  
“I merely question how likely it is,” Snape said, sounding as if he would repeat the words for days on end like Binns if he had to, “what the chances are—”  
  
“I know your theory,” Harry said, turning around and scowling at him. “I discard your theory. I know how to find one of these bloody things, and I  _found_ it, all right? It’s simple enough, and a reliable method. Why would I go and search out something else when I already know where it is? What it is?”  
  
“I simply wonder,” said Snape, and his eyes were bright and glittering, and he reached out a hand. Harry flinched in spite of himself, watching it so closely that it probably seemed strange to Snape, but all Snape did was hold out his hand and extend one finger, tapping the golden cross around Harry’s neck that had brought him back in time. “Because I can feel powerful Dark magic from  _this_ little ornament, but you don’t appear to have picked up on it.”  
  
Harry stood there for a second with his hand cupped protectively around the cross. That seemed to “inspire” Snape, who gave him a faint smile and moved his finger so it was stroking Harry’s knuckles instead. Harry jerked and ducked away, and raised an unimpressed eyebrow at Snape.   
  
“You feel something Dark, and you immediately decide it must be the same as Slytherin’s bowl,” Harry said. “ _Whose_ powers of deduction are in question here?”  
  
Snape moved slowly to the side, trailing his hand along Harry’s shoulder. This time, Harry refused to give him the satisfaction of flinching, and just stood and stared at him stonily. Unfortunately, that seemed to give him a different kind of satisfaction, if the way that Snape uttered a sort of purring sigh was any indication.  
  
“It feels like the same sort of Dark magic that I associated with the Dark Lord,” Snape said, in a voice barely above a whisper. “While the magic around the bowl does not have the same taint. It feels like Slytherin magic, as in some of the old enchantments that permeate the common room and students’ beds, and nothing else.”  
  
Harry clutched at the cross and said nothing. But he had to wonder. The Unspeakables had never made it clear where this cross came from. They hadn’t made it clear what kind of relationship it had to Time-Turners. They had only offered it, and said it would bring him back into the timeline, and then return him to the future. What did he  _know_ about it?  
  
But Harry shook his head sharply a second later. “Look,” he said, taking the cross off after only a moment of hesitation. Snape showed no signs of snatching at it or trying to wreck it, anyway. His gaze was on Harry, and remained there, heavily, as Harry held up the cross on its chain.  
  
 _That’s because it’s me, and not a time-travel device, that he wants._  
  
But Harry shoved that thought away, and swung the cross back and forth. “The method I have of calling on the Dark magic and identifying one of his—artifacts,” he said, “is that I reach out with the part of me that used to be tainted with his reflected curse.” He tapped his scar. “I can still sense a sort of echo in artifacts that Voldemort used. And I sensed it right away from the bowl when I came into Knockturn Alley.”  
  
Snape gave him the sort of infinitely patient look Harry was familiar with from his time as a student. “How do you sense it?”  
  
“I just told you—”  
  
“I did not mean that.” Snape’s voice sharpened a little, and Harry was glad to hear it. “Do you see an aura? Hear a sound? What identifies the object in question to you?”  
  
“An echo,” said Harry, glad that they were back on mutually comprehensible and also snarling terms. It was familiar ground. “I can sense the direction and distance from the echo.”  
  
“Then take the cross and put it in an opposite direction from the bowl,” Snape murmured. “Stand in the center of the room, an equal distance from each, and send out your echo again. And see which one responds.”  
  
Harry scowled at him, but Snape only stood there and looked at him with an expression that suggested this was almost of  _scientific_ interest to him. It probably would be, the bloody bastard. Harry turned and stalked over to the table that stood closest to the door, lowering the cross. Then he moved back and tried to position himself roughly halfway between it and the bowl.  
  
Snape’s hands fell on his shoulders and moved him. Harry stumbled a little, then turned around, ready to snap. Snape had already lifted his hands free and stood there with them outspread, a faint smile on his face.  
  
“You looked as if you needed help,” he said.  
  
Harry glanced off to the side and willed himself calm. He might already have caused damage by doing everything he had done. The least he could do was act in a non-volatile way.  
  
And who knew? That might even make him less interesting for Snape, who mostly seemed to be intrigued so far when Harry did something stubborn and snappish.  
  
“Ready?” Snape continued. If he was less intrigued, he at least wasn’t acting like it right now.  
  
“Yes,” said Harry, and he concentrated. The world around him narrowed, as it always did when he used this bloody “gift,” to the tunnel he had to create through his scar, and the object he was calling towards. He threw those dark emotions down the tunnel, willing the bowl to respond. Of course it made sense that it was the bowl. Voldemort had always liked objects that had significance to his family line, as his choice of both Slytherin’s locket and the Peverell ring demonstrated, and—  
  
The dark pulse came from the side of the room that held the cross.  
  
Harry turned and stared at it. Then he moved towards it and reached out to pick it up with shaking hands. Snape walked beside him, although he said nothing. Instead, he was looking between the cross and Harry’s face with a quiet, contemplative expression.  
  
 _Why did I get fooled?_  
  
Well, Harry knew the reason when he had thought about it, of course, the reason that Snape’s little questions and activities had already revealed to him. He had been fooled because the cross was so close to him. He had decided it had to be the bowl because the pulse was so strong and it was the first likely Horcrux he had come across, not because of any reasoned argument.  
  
And until he had done something like Snape had suggested, in a rather large room, it was always possible that he wouldn’t have been able to figure out the difference between a calling Horcrux right in front of him and one around his neck.  
  
“Why?” he whispered, although he knew Snape wouldn’t have the slightest idea of what to respond. “Why would this be a Horcrux? Why would the Unspeakables choose it to send me back in time if it was? How did he even get  _hold_ of it?”  
  
“The Dark Lord had interesting ways to do whatever he wanted,” Snape said, and reached out and put a hand on the cross, bearing it down until Harry looked up from it and into Snape’s eyes in sheerest irritation. Snape stepped closer to him, as if he wanted Harry to focus on him and not the cross. Harry almost snorted. Of  _course_  Snape would want something like that. He always did, bloody bastard. “And who says that the Unspeakables knew? If your little test is any indication, it is hard to identify Horcruxes.”  
  
Harry flinched at the word, and then realized he’d said it during his last little rant. He was—he was so  _bad_ at keeping secrets. They should have sent someone else back in time! Why  _him_?  
  
He snatched up his wand and cast the Memory Charm as fast as he could, wordlessly. His desperation was so great that he felt the magic flow out of him much more powerfully than it usually did when he tried to cast nonverbally. It was going to work—  
  
It bounced from Snape’s shield, and Snape regarded him calmly.  
  
“I have Occlumency shields powerful enough to hide secrets from the Dark Lord himself,” he said. “If I did not think so, I would have killed myself the instant I realized he was not fully dead.”  
  
Harry stared, taken away from his own internal drama for a moment. “Killed yourself?”  
  
“Because I would rather die than suffer what I would if the Dark Lord found out I had betrayed him, and he was alive to cast the curses,” Snape said simply. He shifted forwards and reached out to touch Harry’s brow, smoothing his hair back from his scar. “You may trust my discretion.”  
  
Harry shook his head. “But I can’t trust mine. And it’s not what you might  _say_ that I don’t trust. It’s what you’ll do.”  
  
“Ah,” said Snape. “But if the timeline was changed, then you should have  _also_ changed, correct? Because you are a product of the future, standing in the past. If you had done something that affected your destiny so profoundly, you would have ceased to exist the moment you did it.”  
  
Harry hesitated. He had to admit, that was one point of the theory that the Unspeakables hadn’t really explained to his satisfaction. He had asked about loops and paradoxes and so on, but they had assured him that the method of time-traveling by the cross was safe, and that he was extremely unlikely to stumble into someone who could change history and see him in the first place.  
  
 _Because I should have known them and known to stay away from them,_ Harry thought, and held back a sigh. “I don’t know,” was all he said. “I was making excuses and telling myself that it didn’t make that much difference, but I have to do what I can to keep my presence here a secret.”  
  
“You would also have to  _Obliviate_ Albus, now,” said Snape calmly. “And even if you explained to him the nature of the timeline, he is more likely to let you think you had successfully performed the Memory Charm, and then cause trouble later.”  
  
 _Damn it._ Harry folded his arms and turned away. He knew that Snape was right. Dumbledore meant well, he always did, but Harry thought he would probably preserve the memories and look at them later, and who  _knew_ what that could do?  
  
“Let me tell you what I think,” said Snape, drawing Harry’s unwilling gaze back to him. “I think that you have spent too much time thinking about this. I think that the Unspeakables would not have given you such an artifact lightly, and that if the timeline was that easily damaged, they would indeed have sent someone else—at least to accompany you, if they truly had no other method to detect Horcruxes.”  
  
Harry grunted. “At least I wouldn’t have blurted out what they were with a minder.”  
  
“I knew what they were,” said Snape.   
  
Harry turned and stared at him, wondering why in the world that had happened, or whether the memories he had retrieved from the dying Snape had simply concealed Snape’s prior knowledge instead of flaunting it. Snape caught his eye and gave him a smug smile. “Your hints about the Dark Lord having artifacts that kept him alive were enough to let me figure it out,” he said. “That book you saw me reading the other night was about them.”  
  
Harry sighed.  _Hermione, you should be the one here, not me._ If nothing else, he thought Hermione would have been smart enough to avoid attracting Snape’s notice in the first place, and she wasn’t the one whose mum Snape had been in love with. That was the only way Harry could really explain this fascination, Snape’s transferring his obsession.  
  
“Fine,” he said. “Then I’ll destroy the cross with Fiendfyre and the spell you taught me, and you can have the bowl.” He looped the cross around his neck again, shuddering a little. He wondered what would happen when it was destroyed. Would he be able to return to the future?  
  
Or would it be better to simply return to the future and destroy the bloody thing there?  
  
Harry relaxed with another sigh. Yes, of course that was the best solution. And it could prevent any more issues with time travel. Among other things, he would make sure that he  _had_ a future to return to.  
  
“Thanks for helping me figure it out, Snape,” he said, with a nod. “Let me—” He turned to the door, and frowned. The door had just locked with an audible click, and an easy motion of Snape’s wand.  
  
“I find that I am not willing to let you go so easily,” Snape said in a drawl, his eyes shuttered and his arms folded.  
  
Harry faced him, glad there was something here he could be angry about without damning himself for it. “Let’s say that we did become lovers, the way you seem to hope,” he said, and put as much acidic sarcasm in his voice as he could muster. “What would happen after that? It’s  _temporary_ , remember? Anything I do here is. I would always have to return to my own time.”  
  
“If anything you do is temporary,” said Snape, not looking as if he relished the word, “then so are the kisses. So is the information you tell me, and any actions that I might take as a result.” He reached out and curled harsh fingers around Harry’s arm, tugging Harry towards him. Harry went with it because it would prevent a bruise, and perhaps convince Snape that Harry was a fool and he himself was a bastard sooner. “So is this,” Snape said, in a voice that had a hint of the lash to it, and bent down.  
  
Harry watched him flatly. If Snape tried to cast a spell on him or break his neck, he was going to find out in a hurry how prepared Harry’s Auror training had made him for this kind of close struggle.  
  
But Snape only kissed him on the neck, and then bit down.  
  
No one had ever done that before—and Harry would hardly say he was inexperienced. He found himself on his toes, gasping, his head tilting back and the cords in his neck standing out before he even thought about it. What he knew was that he wanted more of this, and he reached up and tangled his fingers in Snape’s hair to communicate that.  
  
Snape said something, but it was a smug murmur, and Harry didn’t bother concentrating to make out the words. He turned his head, and this time Snape’s lips met his, and Snape tugged forwards and turned them sideways.  
  
That pinned Harry up against the wall. Harry didn’t care. He paused, and then his clarity came back, and he shoved Snape away from him and shut his eyes.  
  
Snape went with reluctance, his gaze narrowed as though against a raging fire. He reached a hand up and felt at his lips, and then lowered his hand and smiled at Harry. “The more memories you can give me,” he said, “the more I can carry into the future.”  
  
Harry swore and closed his eyes. He wanted to say something, but he was afraid his voice would come out hoarse and shaking, and he was so  _tired_ of being weak, of being pathetic, like that.  
  
Then Snape murmured, “How do you know that I didn’t simply conceal this interaction from your future self? I am rather good at Occlumency, and I frequently use Pensieves. Why would I have  _told_ you about any of this? If you were a child, and it’s your adult self I slept with, I would have no reason to tell you at all.”  
  
“I told you and I’ve kept telling you,” Harry said, massaging his forehead. “It’s not what you said to me. It’s what you  _did_. What if I’ve influenced the way that you tried to help me or go against me in the future? The way that you had to help or go against Voldemort?”   
  
“Time travel is probably part of the same unchanging flow of history,” Snape said. “Or it’s a loop. You were always here, you were always meant to be here, and you might have increased both the protectiveness and the resentment I was prepared to feel towards your child self. I don’t think it changes anything.”  
  
How Harry wanted to believe that, that he hadn’t doomed himself and all the other people of his future to oblivion because he couldn’t control his mouth. Then he thought of something that Snape had left out. “But Dumbledore knows now, too.”  
  
“Yes,” said Snape. “Isn’t that  _interesting_?”  
  
Harry jerked his head up. “You knew he was coming, this morning,” he said flatly. “Bastard. And you let him in and let him see me anyway.”  
  
“Yes,” said Snape, and gave him an unapologetically hungry look. “I told you. I think that you’ve been seen by two people who could affect history, but have excellent methods of making sure they don’t. And that means you might as well—”  
  
“Listen,” said Harry, and pushed himself away from the wall. “I get that this is a way to sleep with me, to you, but this is my  _life_. I located the wrong Horcrux. But I know what the right one is now, and it doesn’t even have to affect the bowl and the Parseltongue that you might learn from Slytherin’s spirit. I can go away and do what I came to do and this is the end of it. Why would you want to risk more than that?”  
  
Snape stepped back from him and stood there looking at him for a second. Harry didn’t know what to make of the dark, serious expression on his face, and so waited. Snape finally nodded and began to speak in a soft, distant voice, as if he was answering the most important exam question of his life.  
  
“Do you know how long it has been since I  _wanted_ something?”  
  
“Er.” Harry felt disgusted saying this, but it was pretty obvious, at least to him. “I had the impression you wanted my mum.”  
  
“Yes.” Snape focused on him again, with alarming intensity. “But I have known for years that I couldn’t have her. Even the plea I made to the Dark Lord to save her life was more out of old, lingering desire than present desire. And now I have found out. And I want you.”  
  
“For reasons that make no  _sense!_ ” Harry threw up his hands.  
  
“For reasons I do not understand yet and want to figure out,” Snape corrected him with some severity. “And in the meantime, there is every reason for you to stay and let me help you. I can help with more than the destruction of the Horcrux.”  
  
“With what else?” Harry was getting a headache that had nothing to do with the lingering echoes of sensing the Horcrux, which sometimes caused one, and everything to do with the  _git_ of a man in front of him, who was going to destroy the timeline for his cock.  
  
“With figuring out whether it would be best to destroy the cross here or in your original timeline,” said Snape simply. “And whether your actions so far have the potential to damage the future, as you fear, or if I am right and everything has simply been bent into a loop that will contain any ill effects.”  
  
Harry hesitated. It was true he was almost sick with worry, and this would enable him to put his fear to rest. But it was also true that what Snape wanted and what he wanted hadn’t coincided, yet.  
  
“I figured out what Horcruxes were from simply sensing the Dark magic around one, and reading a book in which they were not even directly mentioned,” Snape reminded him. “I told you the truth instead of letting you destroy the bowl and then go home—although I could have done that, and left you with a motive to return to this time. So. I suggest you trust me.”  
  
Harry snorted a little, but he was thinking clearly again now that both his pulse and his racing thoughts had calmed down. If Snape honestly didn’t help him or wouldn’t, then he could go to Dumbledore. And Dumbledore would probably know more about time travel and Horcruxes than Snape did and could hide the information better.  
  
He could still make this work to his advantage. And he doubted that there was such a line between damaging the future and saving it so simultaneously thick and thin that he hadn’t already crossed it but would with one more action.  
  
He was in too far to back out now, because of his own stupid fault. He owed it to the future to at least  _try_ to salvage it.  
  
“All right,” he agreed, and saw the way Snape’s eyes flared with delight when he smiled.


	7. Different Discoveries

"Time travel should be practiced more often," Snape murmured, lifting a book from the Restricted Section of the Hogwarts library and squinting at it for a moment before shaking his head and laying it aside. "Then we would have more knowledge about how it actually affects the timeline."  
  
Harry didn't bother to dignity that with a response. He had learned that keeping silent was the best way to irritate Snape.   
  
Not that he wanted to irritate Snape all the time. He knew he needed to rely at least a _little_ on the bastard to help him out and get him back to his own time. And Snape was the one who had told him about the cross being a Horcrux.   
  
But he was looking through the books that Snape tossed aside, on the off-chance he was getting rid of them not because they said nothing but because they said too much, and would actually help Harry go back to his time and escape Snape's clutches.  
  
_Listen to me. Snape's clutches. I sound like I think I'm a princess in a fairy story or something,_ Harry thought in disgust, and paged through the book. A second later, he sighed. No, this was only theories of time-travel that were outdated, since the first page said, "There is no method to reliably travel back in time even for a few minutes." That meant it had been written before the invention of Time-Turners.  
  
Harry pushed back the book and picked up another one, moving down the shelf ahead of Snape. Snape turned to the side so he could pass, but kept his shoulder pointing a little into the aisle of books, so Harry had to brush his arm against Snape's robes.  
  
Harry snarled in soft irritation. "Are you _this_ hard up?" he demanded. "You couldn't find someone to sleep with if you wanted to?"  
  
"No," said Snape, without looking up. Harry thought that was the answer to his question and was about to follow it with a caustic remark when Snape added, "I could if I wanted to, but I only sleep with fascinating people." He gave Harry a grin full of teeth. "And you are simply that fascinating."  
  
Harry cursed again and picked up a different book. Again, useless. He put it back on the shelf--Snape promptly snatched it out to join his growing pile of discarded ones on the floor instead--and reached for another.  
  
_Secrets of Time. Guaranteeing History. How to Become an Unspeakable._ Harry shook his head. Hermione had once complained about the organization of the Hogwarts library and how it seemed to have been arranged by someone who didn't _want_ students to find anything useful. Ron and Harry had hidden yawns and nodded along. But this far back in time and with a secret so important to find, Harry could see Hermione's point. He would apologize to her when he got back to his own time.  
  
_If I ever see her again._  
  
Harry violently swallowed back his anger and pain and reached for another book. He wouldn't get anything accomplished by standing around brooding, the way that Snape had for so many years.  
  
"What is this?" Snape asked abruptly, and thrust a book under his nose. Harry turned towards it willingly. He thought Snape had a sixth sense for when Harry was getting "too maudlin," as he put it, and knew how to distract him.  
  
For a second, Harry didn't see the point of what Snape was holding in front of him. It seemed to be a book on jewels instead of time travel, and not only did that have no relevance to their search, it probably shouldn't even be in the Restricted Section. Harry was about to comment on that when his eye caught the text Snape's finger was tapping right beneath.  
  
... _most wonderful for their properties when inserted in artifacts. Heartsblood resemble rubies, but as is well-known, rubies have little effect on magical artifacts. Their wonderful hardness means that they can take only small impressions from magic--not the best guarantee for a successful, working artifact._  
  
_But heartsblood are much smoother and softer, and can be easily carved with runes, shaped to fit different holes in artifacts, or made to serve as the focal point of a pattern. They can glow with light that looks exactly like the light of rubies and has little or no difference. They are also supposedly being used in experimental artifacts that would permit time travel, although as yet there are no results from this._  
  
Harry's hand went once more to the golden cross around his neck, and the small red stones that starred it.  
  
"Did they actually _tell_ you that those jewels were rubies?" Snape asked, in a soft, insistent voice.  
  
"No...." Harry whispered. He had assumed without thinking it, and he thought Hermione had referred to them as rubies once. But not even Hermione could know everything, and she could easily have been fooled by the similarities between the stones.  
  
"Then they might be heartsblood," said Snape, and a second later he was twisting the cross on Harry's neck around to get a better look at it. Harry jumped as he turned to face him and swung up his arm, ready to cast, but Snape only sneered at him and shook his head. "I wouldn't destroy it. You will want to stay with me of your own free will, in the end."  
  
Harry quieted, but remained distrustful, with an eye on Snape's face, as he bent down to study them. He didn't actually _know_ that Snape was going to keep his word. Maybe he would decide Harry was "better off" here with him and do something to destroy the cross. But if Harry had to destroy it as a Horcrux anyway...  
  
Harry sighed. Things were confusing. They really _should_ have chosen Hermione to come back in time.  
  
"They are heartsblood," said Snape, after a moment. His wand twitched, and Harry tried to jump backwards, although since he was sandwiched between Snape and a bookcase, that didn't work. The jewels did nothing except glow for a second and then fade back into their usual color again. "The color isn't as clear and depthless as it would be with rubies." He slowly lowered the cross until it bumped against Harry's chest. "They told you nothing before they let you depart, did they?"  
  
"They gave me instructions that I've already messed up," said Harry tartly, and tucked the cross inside his shirt again. "Stay out of sight. Don't let people who can affect history see you. Destroy the Horcrux."  
  
"You haven't been able to obey the first two because of me," Snape disagreed softly, hovering. "And the last you can still complete."  
  
Harry looked into Snape's eyes for a second. Snape slowly and delicately laid a hand over Harry's heart, all the while gazing into his face.  
  
Harry felt breathless. He ducked his head and wriggled to the side, getting out from his pinned position, and let Snape look at him with amusement all he wanted. At least Harry was safe from doing something that would have been _monumentally_ stupid.   
  
"What else can we find out about heartsblood?" he asked, keeping his face averted. "I mean, it tells us something about the cross, but..." He trailed off, wondering if he could take the heartsblood out of the cross and still travel back to his time just with them. Maybe the cross was the original artifact that Voldemort had possessed to make it a Horcrux and the heartsblood were simply the things the Unspeakables had put into it to make it function as a Time-Turner.  
  
"We should go to Borgin and Burkes," said Snape in an unexpectedly strong voice. "They may recognize the cross."  
  
Harry turned around and stared at him. "Are you mental? I mean, I could walk into the shop without them seeing me, but they could also try to take it away! Or at least remember it in a way that could affect the timeline."  
  
Snape arranged his face in an expression of concern. "Oh, did I not show you the book I found? It contains information about time travel that might be of some interest to us. And proves I was right," he added, and whipped the tome out from behind his back.  
  
Harry hissed. Snape listened attentively to it, as if sifting it for a hint of Parseltongue. Harry met his eyes and impatiently pushed him out of the way, holding out a hand for the book.  
  
"We're going to work together," said Snape placidly, avoiding Harry's reach. "After all, I don't know that you might not pry the jewels out of the cross and simply pop off when I'm not looking otherwise."  
  
Since Harry had been considering the plan, it only made him all the more irritated to hear Snape talk about it. "Fine, but at least let me _see_ the book," he said, and Snape nodded and lowered the book to Harry's height. Harry shook his head when he realized Snape was still holding one corner so that Harry would have to rely on him to turn the pages. "Why do you like irritating me so much if you just intend to sleep with me anyway?"  
  
"Because your eyes shine so."  
  
Harry tensed, keeping his head bowed. Well, it was a good reminder. Snape was mainly attracted to him for his eyes, which were the most visible reminder of Harry's mum. In case Harry ever started to slip into trusting Snape too much, then he would need to remember that.  
  
Snape reached out and slipped a hand beneath Harry's chin, tilting his face gently back to smile down into it. "I promise," he whispered, slipping his lips swiftly along Harry's forehead, "no one else means as much as you do to me."  
  
"At the moment," Harry muttered. "With my mum dead."  
  
"Exactly," said Snape, as if that only made it all the more understandable.  
  
Harry snorted and began to page through the book. Just give up on understanding Snape, the way he mostly had in his sixth year, and he would probably be better off.  
  
*  
  
"You have seen it before."  
  
Harry, under his Invisibility Cloak just in case someone in the shop could affect time, blinked at Snape's blunt assertion. He had thought they were being subtle in coming here. After all, the whole point was to get information without leaving an impression on anyone that the cross was important or worth paying attention to.  
  
But Snape had simply held it up in front of a man Harry thought was Borgin and said, "What is this?" And then Borgin had twitched or something, and that subtle clue seemed to have indicated to Snape that he knew something about it.  
  
"Yes, fine," said Borgin, sullenly, his hands curling around the edge of the counter as though he wanted to punch Snape. "I'm only telling you this because you've been one of my best customers, mind. I first saw the ruddy thing years ago, when it was brought in by this half-mad warlock who claimed he'd found it in a cave. Said it was an artifact of Godric Gryffindor himself." Borgin sniffed. "Not that there's much proof of that. I was doing him a kindness to take it off his hands. Still remember how much I paid for it. There's no one better come to me saying I ain't kind, after that."  
  
Harry caught his breath and reached out to nudge Snape in the back, as subtly as he could without drawing attention to the movement of his limbs under the Invisibility Cloak. It being an artifact of Gryffindor would explain Voldemort's attraction to it.  
  
Snape jabbed back with a vicious elbow that nearly caught Harry in the side of the head, and nodded at Borgin. "You'll show me the proof that it belonged to Gryffindor, of course," he said, and tapped the cross with one nail, as if assuming that making it spin would render the proof clearer to his eyes.  
  
Borgin made an aggrieved sighing sound and reached out to stop the cross from spinning. Snape gave him a smile and refused to let go of it. Harry relaxed a little. He had been unhappy about taking the cross from around his neck and entrusting it to Snape in the first place, but at least Snape seemed properly dedicated to taking care of it.  
  
"Right, right," Borgin muttered under his breath, and paused when he got a good look at the cross. "It didn't have these heartsblood gems in it before."  
  
"You can let me worry about how they got there," Snape said in a smooth voice that made Borgin cringe a little. "I'm only interested in the proof that it supposedly belonged to Gryffindor."  
  
His sneer on the last word was perfect, making Borgin roll his eyes at him as if he knew all about Snape's grudges, and probably dismiss any other motivation that Snape might have for bringing the cross into the shop from his mind. "Right there, it is," said Borgin, and jabbed his finger at the notch where one of the cross's arms joined the body. "For what it's worth. Never looked much like Gryffindor's mark to _me_."  
  
Snape bent down. Harry tried to crowd up behind him and see, but it was dim in the shop, and Harry didn't want to cause any suspicious noise, even if the usual method time travel operated would make Borgin dismiss it with a harmless explanation.  
  
"Remarkably like Gryffindor's mark for a fake," said Snape, in the disagreeable way he had of saying things that made you want to argue back on principle, and lifted his head to stare again at Borgin. "Where did the warlock say he'd found it?"  
  
Borgin shrugged. "It's been years, Snape. You can't expect me to remember details like that--"  
  
He stopped, because Snape's wand was resting against his temple. "You remembered the details of Gryffindor's mark and the fact that it had no gems before," Snape murmured. "I think that you will either tell me something significant, or I will take your memories."  
  
Borgin cringed again, and then half-shouted, "All right, all right! He said he found it in a cave in Albania, hidden in a place brimming with Dark magic. I tried to go and look for the cave to see if there were any more treasures there, but I never could find it. And that's the truth."  
  
"He did not make the directions clear enough?" Snape was still twirling the wand shaft between his fingers even as he kept the tip pressed firmly against Borgin's temple. That would unnerve _him_ too, Harry had to admit.  
  
"No," Borgin said. "He was half-mad, I told you. You can watch the memory, but it won't tell you more than that."  
  
"Hmm," said Snape, and pulled his wand back. "And how long was the cross in your possession? When did it leave it?"  
  
"At least three years." Borgin winced and rubbed his temple, but he might as well have looked to a statue for sympathy as to Snape. "Then some cloaked lot came in and bought it. He said he wanted it for a grand purpose. That's all I know."  
  
"That will do," said Snape, and then abruptly reversed the cross and pointed to one of the heartsblood jewels on the arm. "What enchantment does this one bear?"  
  
Harry narrowed his eyes. Discussing the magic of the blasted Horcrux with Borgin hadn't been part of the plan he and Snape had made. But since when did Snape do anything in the ordinary way?  
  
"It has an enchantment on it?" Borgin immediately shook his head. "Wasn't there when I bought it. That's all I know." He held Snape's gaze stubbornly again, and this time, Harry didn't think he would back down. He began easing around to the side, so that if Snape did something _really_ stupid, Harry would be there in a position to grab the cross.  
  
Snape shifted easily, blocking Harry's access to the cross without appearing to do so. "I know it has an enchantment on it. I want you to tell me what it _is_."  
  
Borgin made a grumbling, unimpressed sound, but leaned towards the heartsblood gem again. Harry drew his wand and clutched it tightly under the Cloak. Rather than allow Borgin to discover something important about the cross or destroy a jewel, Harry would simply Summon it back to him. Then he could leave _Snape_ to cover up the breach of security that the flying cross would create.  
  
"It's unique, isn't it?" Borgin hazarded after a second, looking at Snape out of the corner of his eye. "I mean, this isn't anything ordinary. It's...it's a travel enchantment."  
  
_If he can recognize Time-Turners, he can recognize this,_ Harry thought, and lifted his wand to cast the Summoning Charm after all.  
  
"A travel enchantment? Meant to aid in Apparating?" Snape sounded honestly surprised, not calculating or affectedly ignorant, and Harry hesitated. He wondered if perhaps a travel enchantment wasn't related to time travel after all, or not only that.  
  
"Yeah," said Borgin. "I mean, the first, not the second. This ain't just Apparating!" For a moment, his fingers danced over the surface of the cross, but he didn't attempt to either take it away or pry out the jewels, to Harry's relief. "They're meant as anchors. So you could travel a long way through space, and still be able to come back to them accurately. Like you'd be able to open a Floo connection and travel through it to any other Floo where you'd left one of these beauties, whether or not the Floo you'd opened normally connected there. Or, yeah, you could Apparate to a jewel like this from any distance and even if you couldn't remember the Apparition coordinates of the place you'd left it. Or never seen them. You could have someone hide one and be able to come in that way!" In his enthusiasm, Borgin leaned forwards and prodded at Snape under the ribs. "Or you could travel other ways. Through time, eh?"  
  
Snape only looked back with a bored, bland face, although Harry had come near leaping out of his skin and the Cloak when Borgin said that. Then Snape nodded once and said, "That tells me what I need to know," and turned away with the cross.  
  
"You don't want to sell it?" Borgin called after him, sounding a little desolate.  
  
Snape didn't bother replying, only nudged the door open with his elbow. Harry ducked rapidly through after him, and made sure to keep at his side as Snape hastened up towards the mouth of the alley.  
  
When Harry was sure they were alone, he hissed out of the side of his mouth to Snape, "What were you thinking, to mention the jewels to him?"  
  
"That we'd gain extra information," said Snape, and reached sideways with one arm. Harry found himself seized and bundled close, and then Snape was Apparating. They landed on the road to Hogsmeade.  
  
Snape took a few rapid steps until a large tree hid him and Harry from both anyone coming from the town and anyone coming down from Hogwarts, and then turned to face Harry with his eyes shining. "Do you _understand_ what this is?" he asked, and shook the cross in his face.  
  
"A Horcrux, and my ticket out of here," said Harry, and grabbed one of the cross's arms.  
  
Snape didn't even attempt to take it back, although he resisted when Harry tried to turn the cross to see Gryffindor's mark. "A Horcrux, yes," he breathed. "But what makes it special are the jewels that your Unspeakable friends inserted into it. No wonder they thought you could use it to return to your own time. They must have embedded a similar enchanted jewel somewhere in the Department of Mysteries in your year, and the cross would then be able to connect you to it across time."  
  
Harry relaxed completely. Assuming his future was still there to travel to--something he and Snape hadn't settled completely yet, although that last book had been promising--he shouldn't have any trouble getting back.  
  
It occurred to him, belatedly, that a secure way for him to leave wouldn't make Snape look like _that_. Harry glared a little. "And what else does it mean? What does it mean to get you so _happy_?"  
  
"It means," said Snape, "that you could leave a jewel here, and still be assured of finding your way back. No matter how far away you went. No matter if you returned to your own time. You would still have someone waiting for you here." For a moment, his hands clenched down hard enough on Harry's shoulders to make him wince. "Me."  
  
"You don't want me that much," said Harry after a second of thinking about it. "You might think you do, but you don't. Not really," he added, when he saw the way Snape's eyebrow went up. "Maybe as someone who's strange and exotic and can tell you things about the future, but for a long time? No."  
  
"What about someone who is several times a fleeting visitor, and does keep going away after that, but always comes back?" Snape breathed, and reached out to cup Harry's cheek. Harry had never had someone with such long hands touch his face. He jerked a little, but the motion seemed to go entirely unnoticed by Snape. "Do you really want to abandon me forever?"  
  
Harry forced his eyes shut. He was liable to agree to things he shouldn't when he met Snape's gaze for too long, he thought. Witness the things Snape had already got him to do.  
  
"I don't know you," he said. "I know a different version of you, and that one is a man I admire and honor, but can't say I exactly _like_." Present tense, a lie, but one that would keep Harry from revealing some painful truths. "I can't--I only came to this time to destroy the Horcrux. _Only_. I can't pretend that I came for any other reason. And you're sort of a fool if you want me to pretend, honestly. Sorry, Snape," he added belatedly, and forced his eyes open again.  
  
Snape didn't look angry or hurt or disappointed, although the man Harry had known would probably have looked all three when being deprived of something he wanted. He only stood there and looked into Harry's face, and then nodded a little, as if he was confirmed in some belief by his gazing.  
  
Then he said, "Let me show you one thing you would miss out on if you left now."  
  
"I didn't ever say I was leaving _now_ ," Harry began.  
  
But Snape had leaned forwards and started kissing him again, and Harry was left flailing at Snape's shoulders in a way that Snape seemed to find pleasurable, if the sigh he made was any indication. Then he urged his tongue past Harry's lips, with a motion Harry could never reconstruct in his own head afterwards, and Harry was being pressed against the tree and _kissed._  
  
And this time, he doubted Snape intended to stop.  
  



	8. Giving In to Madness

Snape’s kiss was warm and consuming enough that Harry’s head spun and his thoughts flew in all different directions, like children tossed off a carousel.  
  
He felt good. He couldn’t do this. He would destroy the timeline. They had probably already destroyed it. Snape had distracting hands. Snape was messing with him. Dumbledore knew about his existence here, too. Snape had been in love with his mum. The cross was a Horcrux. The jewels could do—who knew what.  
  
God, Harry felt  _confused_.  
  
But as he reached up and placed his hands on Snape’s shoulders, he knew he had at least made one decision. He couldn’t continue stumbling from interaction to interaction, with Snape in control of all of them. He had made Harry, without even intending to, tell him a lot more about the future than Harry was comfortable with, and revise his opinions of why he had come back, and show off his Parseltongue, and pretend to be his lover.  
  
 _No more._ Harry was going to be in control now, if only for a moment.  
  
Snape let himself be pushed back, but his face was different than Harry had ever seen it. It was so flushed with desire that it looked as though he’d put a mask on. Snape’s eyes were huge, and his hands trembled. He kept them locked on Harry’s shoulders even when Harry had managed to put some distance between the rest of their bodies.  
  
“The truth,” Harry said, and his voice was low and hard, the way he wanted it.  
  
“About what?” Snape echoed back, exactly the same way, but his eyes were devouring Harry in a way that made it far from neutral and innocent.   
  
 _Fine. Maybe I only succeeded in increasing the intensity._ But Harry was at least going to get an answer to his question, which he wouldn’t have if he had let Snape simply continue his kissing and groping without attempting to strike back against it. “Why you want me. You said that you had to keep me around until you knew. Well. I’m going to make you answer now.”  
  
Snape spent a moment with his fingers flexing on Harry’s shoulders, not answering. Harry gave a small, grim smile. Yes, he had thought that was it. When it came down to speaking, Snape was reluctant to do so, because he was simply succumbing to desire and impulse. There was no more serious reason behind it.  
  
 _Heaven forbid that Severus Snape shouldn’t be_ serious.  
  
But then Snape looked up, and Harry, with his heart sinking, realized that he had once again underestimated Snape. Or maybe compared him too much to the one he knew and depended too much on that one’s reactions. Because Snape moved in closer, with his eyes searching Harry’s face, and Harry had the feeling that there  _was_ a serious reason, one that he might not like that much.  
  
“You are unique in my experience,” Snape breathed. “It’s as if—as if I was suddenly handed an opportunity to brew a potion I never knew existed, or see a magical creature that was thought to be extinct. You are a  _wonder_. Nothing like the Harry Potter I imagined, even the adult versions I imagined.”  
  
Harry squirmed a little. “I never imagined you, you know,” he said. “When I was younger.”  
  
“You’re talking about the child at the age you are now? In this timeline? The other you?” Snape’s eyes were filled with a surprising, disturbing warmth. “Of course not. You don’t know I exist, living in the Muggle world.”  
  
Harry clenched his hands a little. That had been, he thought, one surefire way to make Snape back off, to make him  _think_ and realize his burning interest wasn’t reciprocated. “I mean, I imagined you—I thought of what—I imagined you pacing your office and thinking about detention or something when I was at Hogwarts, but I never imagined you…”  
  
“And I probably never desired you that way, in your original timeline,” Snape said smoothly. “But we are not those people, are we?” He reached out and slid a hand through Harry’s hair, so tenderly that his fingertips didn’t even brush the scalp beneath. “Meaning to or not, we have become  _different_. And while I hope that you might—choose to scatter those jewels through time and come back to reunite with me sometimes, I understand that you might not. I only want to take this chance, now, to taste something that I never might again.”  
  
Harry stared at him. “What’s—what’s so different about me from what you imagined? Surely you knew what I’d look like.”  
  
“Do you think  _that_ is the only factor that plays into my attraction?” Snape sounded indignant now, the way Harry had imagined he would be all along, but he only shook his head and continued smoothing his fingers, so gently, so quietly, through Harry’s hair. “The way you bear yourself. Your skill in fighting. Your determination in fighting back and trying to guard your secrets, even if some of it was futile.”  
  
Harry glared at that. Snape smiled. He didn’t laugh. “The way that you can work with me instead of slapping away my hand. Your prejudices are less than I imagined. You give of yourself without pausing, the way you defended me from the explosion of Slytherin’s spirit. You are the only Parselmouth I have ever met not utterly consumed by the Dark Arts. All of these things, and more.”  
  
“How many Parselmouths have you met, though?” Harry decided that enough was enough, and someone had to be disagreeable here.  
  
“Nor have I met many time travelers,” Snape pointed out, simply, unarguably. “And there is only one son of Lily and James Potter in the world.” He managed to say Harry’s dad’s name without more than a single grimace, which seemed to suggest that he was taking this even more seriously than Harry had thought he would. He drew nearer, almost impossibly so, and stroked one hand down Harry’s cheek. “I am drawn to you because you are nothing like I could have expected, because this is a chance I’ll never have again, because you are wildly attractive in your own right. I could go on listing the attractive things. Your eyes look nothing like Lily’s. Has anyone ever told you that?”  
  
“Are you fucking  _kidding_ me?” Harry greatly enjoyed the chance to make Snape’s eyes widen at his language. “They’re always telling me that I look exactly like my dad with my mum’s eyes. That’s what I hear. Over and over again. That’s what I  _am_.” He pushed against Snape’s chest with one hand again. “So that’s why I have to question your sanity when you describe me some other way, or when you’re attracted to me. How can you be attracted to the man who tormented you, only with green eyes?”  
  
“Because you are not that,” said Snape. “I said that your eyes were different, and I mean that.” For a moment, his hand closed on Harry’s shoulder, almost painfully. “They have shadows hers never held. Lily—blazed with light. You do not. You have walked some of the same roads I have.”  
  
“I’ve never been a Death Eater,” Harry muttered, and he almost would have apologized an instant after he said it, except that maybe this was the best way to make Snape leave him alone.  
  
“No,” said Snape, without pausing, “but I think you have used Dark Arts, and done it because it was necessary or you thought it was, and not regretted it.”  
  
Harry flexed his fingers for a second. Yeah, he had. He still didn’t regret the Unforgivables he had used during the war, even if some of them had been unjustifiable. And he didn’t regret the dirty tricks he had used against some of the Dark wizards he’d hunted, even if he’d once thought he would be horrified by anything less than an absolutely Gryffindor sense of fair play.  
  
He wasn’t just a Gryffindor. He knew that.  
  
“Yes,” said Snape softly, and lifted Harry’s head, their eyes meeting and holding. “Do you know how attractive you are to someone like me? Lily Potter’s son, dipped in darkness, her eyes blurred with it? I always wished that Lily understood me. And now I feel that part of her can.”  
  
“I’m not my mum, then,” said Harry stiffly, and pulled back, except the tree was still behind him and didn’t let him retreat far. “Not enough for you. I’m not—God, Snape, I’m not even  _female_. Or were you always gay and I just didn’t know it?”  
  
Snape laughed aloud. “How can I know what you know, when you still haven’t told me everything about the future?” He turned and looked at Harry, and if there was such a thing as being caressed by eyes, it happened now, making Harry’s skin tingle and heat up nearly as much as if Snape was stroking him with the back of his hand. “No. I was always drawn to a certain kind of personality. Lily had it, or some of it. And you have the rest.”  
  
“Being compared to my mum is even more disturbing than I envisioned it being when I was a kid,” said Harry, as dryly as he could.  
  
Snape again chose not to hear. “A fighting spirit. A stubbornness that was turned to defending me as often as anyone else—until the end. A temper that didn’t always flare at me. An unwillingness to hurt me permanently, even when I did things that might deserve it.”  
  
“Oh, come  _off_ it,” Harry blurted. “I know that you fought before the end and never reconciled!”  
  
“How interesting that you expected me to hate you, and yet you know that,” Snape said. Harry was seriously starting to wonder if he should kick the git in the groin, just to force him to respond to  _something_. “Yes, I went too far for her. But she forgave before that. And so have you. The mere fact that you haven’t shoved me away and run as fast as you can shows that.”  
  
Harry shut his eyes and muttered, “That had nothing to do with courtesy, or kindness, or whatever you think you’re attributing to me. It had to do with being so caught up in things that I made a choice I regretted later.”  
  
“Lily was also good at improvisation.”  
  
 _So are you, you bastard._  
  
“You want me for being like her and for not being like her,” said Harry, because that was really what it sounded like. He strained for a moment against Snape’s hands, but they only held him tighter, and this time, Snape’s voice was filled with something like relief.   
  
“Yes. Exactly! You put it the way I’ve been putting it to myself.” Harry had to open his eyes and look, because it seemed so unlikely that he could be hearing a real smile in Snape’s voice, but no, he  _was_ , and Snape was holding Harry’s hand to his lips and smiling at him over it. “Yes,” he whispered.  
  
“Even if it’s only once,” Harry said.  
  
“Yes,” said Snape. “And I think that you might want this, too. Otherwise, why go along the way you have?”  
  
“When you introduced us as lovers to Dumbledore, I had  _no choice_ —”  
  
“But before that? After that?” Snape’s voice was low and persuasive. “I’ve already told you that I admire you for your fighting skill, and that’s still true. You could have got away. You could have paralyzed me and  _Obliviated_ me. But you haven’t fought very hard, Harry Potter, and I wonder what a Muggle psychologist would make of that.” His hand came up, and his fingers tangled in Harry’s hair, more harshly this time.  
  
“I have no idea,” Harry told him. “I don’t give a shit.”  
  
“Neither did I,” said Severus, “beyond a fleeting moment’s interest. I am far more intent on seeing what  _you_ make of this.” And he lowered his head and kissed Harry again.  
  
Harry felt it this time, the give in Snape’s arms, the way that he might just be able to break or back away again and Snape would cease pursuing him. Snape was pretty determined, but Harry suspected there were lines he wouldn’t cross. Such as trying to rape Harry, for example.  
  
He could be free if he wanted it. He had no idea why he stood there and let Snape kiss him instead, and began to shiver a second later when Snape’s hand curled around the back of his neck.  
  
Except that, if he could be free if he wanted it, he must not want to be free all that much.  
  
And so he lifted his hands and let them slip into Snape’s hair, around his neck, higher, around his ears, just to see what happened.  
  
What happened was a cascade of shivers breaking out over his spine and down, and then he collided with Snape’s chest as they got closer. Snape gave a low laugh—something the man Harry knew  _never_ would have done—and bit him hard enough on the lip to make Harry’s vision flash with stinging stares.  
  
That was it. The difference between the Snape he had known and this one. This Snape was unique for him, too; there would never be another one. The one he knew, that he would get if he went back to his present, was dead.  
  
This—could have no lasting consequences. Either Harry’s timeline was already destroyed and he would spend the rest of his existence trying to resurrect it, or this would have no effect and he would simply go back to his own history with memories, of which he already had plenty. He wasn’t sure that seeing Snape alive was the biggest blow, anyway. Dumbledore had hit him harder.  
  
He wanted—to see what would happen.  
  
And Snape seemed to know that, because the instant Harry relaxed and began to move in concert with him, instead of against him, he stepped back with a hard, fast kiss, shaking his head when Harry automatically whined and reached out to him.  
  
“In a moment,” he whispered, and his breath fanned hot over Harry’s throat. “But for now, we need to go into Hogwarts. I want a flatter, softer surface.” He eyed Harry up and down. “And to see what you look like outside your clothes.”   
  
And his hand closed on Harry’s, and he tugged Harry almost off his feet as he took him towards Hogwarts.  
  
*  
  
Harry thought the strange mood would flee once they were back in Snape’s rooms. It had to. After all, he wasn’t insane. He wasn’t going to risk the whole world for a chance at sex. He might be reckless and stupid and oblivious about some things, but he wasn’t mental.  
  
Except that they were here, and Snape had started depositing huge, deep, sucking kisses on Harry’s neck, and Harry was lying back and moaning on the back of the couch where he had slept and where Dumbledore had found him.  
  
Not even that memory could dispel the sparkling haze that seemed to settle over Harry now.  
  
Snape was kissing him and bending him, and Harry’s feet finally left the floor. He was going to slide over the back of the couch in a second, and thump on his head, and  _then_ he would feel a right royal arse.  
  
But Snape stopped his slide with one hand in the middle of his stomach, which Harry wriggled underneath, and reached for his wand with the other hand. Harry kept still out of curiosity as much as anything else, and watched Snape dissipate his clothes into what looked like pure smoke.  
  
Harry shivered. “If I can’t go back to my own time because I don’t have clothes that were made there, then—”  
  
Snape kissed him again, probably because he was exasperated and wanted Harry to shut up, and then guided Harry back onto the couch again. He was removing his own clothes in the same way, at least, Harry noticed. A small thing to placate him, to make sure that they were both suffering the same amount of inconvenience—  
  
All right. They weren’t. Because Snape still had a whole wardrobe he could choose from, and Harry would have to either go naked or wear clothes that probably wouldn’t travel with him when he went back to his own time.  
  
He opened his mouth to complain once more, and then finally Snape’s tongue filled his mouth and his hands settled in  _exactly_ the right ways, and Harry was lost.  
  
He did slide down onto the couch, but only onto the cushions rather than the floor, and Snape strode around the side, barely breaking his contact with Harry’s skin. Then he was on top of him, and Harry was delighting in feeling how much skin and muscle and flesh he had to struggle against, how much he liked being held down so he could fight.  
  
That was something he had never suspected to be true in his own timeline, and his head clouded with worry again.  
  
But Snape was kissing him demandingly, and Harry couldn’t lie there like a little passive toy and just  _take_ it. He gripped a strand of Snape’s hair, which was slippery, and yanked on it. Snape hissed in a satisfying way, and held out a hand towards the side, snapping his fingers in a way that made Harry wonder if a house-elf was about to pop up.  
  
 _At least we’ll both share the embarrassment if that happens._  
  
Instead of a house-elf, a wandlessly Summoned vial of…something….landed in Snape’s fingers. Harry didn’t know what the something was, potion or oil or cleaning solution. He only knew what Snape intended to use it for.  
  
Snape sat back on his heels and studied him. He had a longer body than Harry had thought he did; he thought of Snape as tall, but not  _long_. And there were scars on it that Harry had never seen before, too, pale pink and white, that seamed his chest and stomach and petered out around his pelvis, and Harry’s own curiosity and daring made him look down to find Snape’s cock.  
  
It bounced softly against his stomach, and it curved. Harry looked straight at it, for long enough that Snape couldn’t possibly think fear was his problem, and then glanced up and held Snape’s eye.   
  
“So,” said Harry. “The couch is sturdy enough for us to do this?”  
  
 _And big enough,_ he could have added, but it seemed Snape understood what he was thinking. He drew his wand and enlarged the couch the way he had last night when Harry slept on it. Then he leaned down and kissed Harry again, while his hands, working independently of his mouth entirely, opened the vial.  
  
Harry lay back and spread his legs out, because he wanted to see what would happen and his head was buzzing and spinning, and this was never going to happen again.  
  
Because it couldn’t. Despite Snape and his theories about scattering the gems through time.  
  
Snape’s fingers entering Harry made him grunt and wriggle, but it wasn’t a bad thing. Maybe he didn’t do enough wriggling during sex, he thought. He edged up so that he was leaning against the arm of the couch, or the thing that had been an arm before it turned into a bed, and looked down so he could see fully.  
  
Snape’s fingers were also long, and getting deeper inside him by the second. Snape was watching his own hand with a rapt expression that made Harry have to hold back a snicker. It seemed that Snape mesmerized himself. Maybe that was one reason that he was so thrilled to find Harry: someone who would admire his greatness, a new audience.  
  
Then Snape glanced up, and the radiance in his eyes when they fell on Harry’s face destroyed all the thought and all the laughter in an instant.  
  
This was something different. It was probably what Snape had said it was before, and that made—that meant—  
  
That sent Harry’s thoughts scattering in all sorts of other directions, sharply enough that he felt like wincing and hiding his eyes. But Snape’s fingers weren’t the things inside him now, it was Snape’s  _cock_ , and Harry was holding his breath so he wouldn’t cry out.  
  
“You can’t tense up like that, or I won’t be able to get inside,” Snape murmured, his voice clinical, his eyes on the place where he was  _adjusting himself_ to enter Harry.  
  
Harry took several deep breaths, trying not to cry out or vomit or do whatever other negative thing would happen when it came to his luck and this situation. He was wondering now whether curiosity was really a strong enough motive to go through with something like this. Yes, it was unique, but it also bloody  _hurt_.  
  
It went on hurting until Snape reached out and took his chin, moving his face over to the side. Harry glared at him through narrowed eyes, and then Snape murmured, “Let me help,” and cast a nonverbal spell, his wand moving back and forth over Harry’s chest.  
  
Harry felt his lungs expand forcefully, taking in enough air to make them ache. And then he calmed down, the feeling settling across his mind for the blink of time it took Snape to make his way inside.  
  
Harry groaned as the effect faded. He was full, and that was different from being in pain, but he was still upset that Snape had cast a spell on him without asking. “What was that, why do you need to use Calming Draughts if you can use that—”  
  
“Because potions are more fun to brew,” Snape murmured, and the thought of hearing Snape talk about  _fun_ at all shut Harry up for long enough that Snape could begin to rock.  
  
The full sensation remained. Harry got used to it. He could watch Snape rocking, the expression of bliss on his face, and think this was entertainingly strange, maybe even interestingly strange, but not something he would want to do again.   
  
Then Snape shifted around, and Harry gasped and reached up and clawed the side of Snape’s head. Snape ducked his face and managed to take the fingers in his hair. He even looked smug when he glanced up again.  
  
“Yes, there it is,” he said. “This is what makes it worth it.” He began to rock again, more forcefully, and this time it was good, and Harry leaned closer and did what he could—which wasn’t really much, it seemed—to get more of the sensation.  
  
The sensation stormed through him. Nothing else he’d felt, no other sexual pleasure, moved like that. Harry arched his back and concentrated on the feeling, gasping when he saw Snape watching him. Then he writhed when Snape hit directly on what had to be his prostate again, and this time his fingers  _did_ manage to leave a few bloody marks across Snape’s shoulders.  
  
Snape grunted, his eyelids trembling and flickering, and thrust again. Harry felt as though he was being dragged along towards a starburst of pleasure, and he arranged himself carefully and thrust down just as Snape thrust up.  
  
 _That does it._  
  
The sensation moved through him again, and Harry ducked his head into Snape’s chest and held on as it swept up and around him, as he moved to meet the storm, and he felt incredibly, explodingly  _good_ , no,  _great_ , and he laughed aloud as he came, because this had been worth trying, after all. Incredibly worth trying.  
  
He actually didn’t notice the moment Snape came, other than the sudden wetness in his arse. He shuddered a little at that, too, but it was okay, and then Snape curved around him and bore him back onto the couch-bed and kissed him, and it was still all-consuming, the way it had been when they kissed under the tree.  
  
“So,” Snape said after a moment.  
  
Harry lay under him and panted, not able to say anything himself.  
  
“Is that good enough for you to try again?”  
  
Harry shut his eyes, and said nothing. The cross seemed to burn against his chest. The silence grew until its burning was worse.  
  
And that was when Harry opened his eyes and said, “I can’t stay.”  
  
And Snape stood up and stalked away, and the bang of his lab door made Harry close his eyes again.


	9. Down With a Bump

Harry sighed and rubbed his chin as he stared at the closed door of Snape’s Potions lab. He had discovered one way that this younger Snape and the one he’d known were the same, perhaps the most important one: when they decided to throw you out of a room, you _stayed_  thrown out.  
  
Harry had managed to get into the lab a few hours before, when all he’d had to defeat was a simple locking charm. He’d only had time to open his mouth and ask if they could talk before Snape had spun on his heel and gestured with his wand, and Harry had gone flying back out, nearly followed by the door. Harry had hit his head on the far wall and scrambled to his feet, shaking off the pain.  
  
It was the aftermath of Occlumency lessons all over again.  
  
Now, though, Harry really did have to go in there and get him, if he wouldn’t come out on his own. Dumbledore’s head was floating in the Floo, and he had asked Harry in a polite, pleasant voice to summon “dear Severus.” He had stayed there while Harry went over and knocked on the door of the lab, only to leap back with his hand stinging. He had never heard of a spell like that that gave no warning before it struck, but it figured Snape would know one.  
  
“You seem to have had a row,” Dumbledore observed patiently behind him.  
  
“Yeah, we did,” said Harry absently, and considered the door again. He wondered if the answer to opening the door was really as super-subtle as he was considering it. Yes, Snape knew wards and charms that he didn’t, but still…  
  
“I have found,” Dumbledore said, and paused until Harry turned around to look at him, “that genuine remorse is often the best way to make up for one’s part in a row.”  
  
Harry turned back to the door and leaned as near as he could. There were some snakes carved into the stone, and he didn’t want Dumbledore to hear the words if they happened to come out in Parseltongue. Harry still wasn’t always good at knowing when he was speaking it. “I’m sorry,” he breathed.  
  
There was a tremble, a shiver, and some ward or spell that Harry hadn’t noticed before, something that seemed like part of the air, dissolved from off the front of the door. Harry blinked, nodded back at Dumbledore, and reached for the handle, still half-convinced that Snape would appear and throw him out again.  
  
But when he opened the door, it was to see Snape standing by the far wall, near a window that looked out into the green depths of the lake. Harry leaned in, then stepped in when there was no immediate retaliation, and said, “The Headmaster wants to talk to you.”  
  
“He was the one who gave you the key to get past the door as well, I suppose,” said Snape, and his voice was utterly indifferent. “Since you wouldn’t try to figure it out on your own.” He looked at Harry over his shoulder, and Harry winced. The look in his eyes wasn’t as raw as the eyes of the fifteen-year-old Snape in that Pensieve memory had been, but that was the only thing that Harry could compare this one to.  
  
“I thought there would be a pretty nasty spell waiting for me if I tried!” Harry objected. He winced at the further glare Snape shot him, but at least he knew better how to deal with this. “You used to know some nasty jinxes and hexes.”  
  
Snape straightened up. “That gives me part of the answer of what happened to me in your time.”  
  
“What, you think you died for lack of company?” Harry snapped, and then froze. He had used past tense in the first sentence, as well as this one.  
  
“Yes,” said Snape, and he went on gazing at Harry. “I don’t think you killed me, though. You have a certain amount of rashness, but also a certain amount of decency. I don’t think you would have ever allowed yourself to sleep with me if you were my murderer.”  
  
Harry took a deep breath. “I didn’t cause your death. You can’t take too much from my words, or read too much into them. Anyway, don’t you want to go out there now and see what Dumbledore wants?”  
  
Snape moved a hand. “He’ll tell me when I go out there. I want to consider the phenomenon in front of me: a Gryffindor with the talents of a Slytherin, and the utter lack of tact that a Ravenclaw might have when discovering some new rare book.”  
  
“Sorry for what I said,” Harry said tensely, and wound his fingers around a cord on the dressing gown he’d borrowed. Snape’s, of course. “But I’m not in the habit of making false promises.”  
  
“You are not in the habit of making any of them, when it comes to me, are you?” Snape spoke in a flat, musing voice. Harry hoped that meant he was getting over his snit and accepting that Harry couldn’t stay for all sorts of reasons that had to do with the timeline and history and excellent things like that. “Or keeping them, if you are?”  
  
Harry held his breath for a second, because it stopped the angry response that he would otherwise have given right away. “I made some promises to the Snape I knew that I broke,” he said. “I kept others, and I was able to do—things that he wanted me to do. I don’t see why we need to let it control the way you think of  _me_. After all, you keep pointing out that you’re not him, and I’m not the baby who lives somewhere in the Muggle world right now.” He kept from saying that he lived with Petunia, just in case this wild and reckless Snape decided that the Dursleys were worth a visit.  
  
Snape paced in front of him for a moment. Then he turned around and said abruptly, “How much are you in the habit of doing something like this?”  
  
“What? Time travel?” But Harry sighed and yielded when he saw the way that Snape stared at him. “Sleeping with chance-met people? Not much. But I did—do—want you, and what you said was very convincing.”  
  
“Ah.”  
  
Harry looked at him sharply, because Snape had said that in a voice that made him worry, but Snape just looked off into the distance with his eyes half-lidded and waved a hand at Harry when he tried to say something. “I’m concentrating,” he said, and spun away from Harry to cross into the outer room where Dumbledore waited.  
  
Harry rolled his eyes and followed. At least he wasn’t the only one who was baffled and a little uncomfortable here, although he wished that Snape’s discomfort hadn’t gone in the direction of actual pain.  
  
*  
  
“How soon will you need this potion?” Snape spoke in a quiet voice that made Harry look up.  
  
Dumbledore and Snape had been talking about potions in an abstract way. Harry had tuned them out a little while ago, and picked up a book from the end table that was, miraculously, not about brewing. It seemed to be about ways to combine wards, and while Harry couldn’t get deeply into it, it served to distract him from a conversation that had long ago gone past his own elementary knowledge.  
  
Now, though, with the way Snape narrowed his eyes at Dumbledore and Dumbledore smiled back in that gentle manner that Harry knew from his own time when he wanted to put someone off the scent…  
  
“Tomorrow,” Dumbledore replied.  
  
Snape jerked up, cursing. “When I have to find ingredients in the Forbidden Forest, dry and pickle them, and make sure that the fire is hot all evening?” he demanded. “Are you out of your mind, old man?”  
  
“Oh, no,” said Dumbledore quietly. “I think it would do you good, my boy. And in the meantime, I could entertain young Mr. Cantor so he didn’t get into trouble while you were brewing.”  
  
Harry perked up a little. Although keeping the truth from Dumbledore might be difficult with all the twisty questions he would probably ask—he was worse than Snape, in his way—it would be nice to talk to someone else. And he could get used to seeing Dumbledore alive again. Apologize, maybe, in a way, for doubting him, the way he had right after Dumbledore died and he was thinking that his plans were wild and useless. He started to nod and say that he wanted to do that, since he was pants at Potions anyway.  
  
“I will require Mr. Cantor’s help to get your potion finished on time, Albus,” said Snape, in a freezing voice that iced over all future discussion. “And I do not trust you with him.”  
  
“My dear boy,” said Dumbledore, shaking his head with a quiver of amusement in his voice. “I promise you, while Mr. Cantor is a beautiful young man, I’m past that time of my life right now. And I have no intention of entering into rivalry with a friend,” he added, sounding a little more serious.  
  
Harry flushed utterly red. “Listen, neither of you need to do anything,” he said as hastily as possible, drawing Snape’s snarling attention and Dumbledore’s smile. “I’m perfectly fine on my own for a few hours while Severus does what he needs to do.” It was an effort of concentration to get Snape’s first name to come out instead of his last, but at least he remembered to do it.  
  
“No, you’re not,” said Snape, and stepped in front of him, reaching down and cupping his chin with one hand. “Not when I want to  _talk_ to you.”  
  
Harry reached that the touch didn’t affect him like this. It still sent warm currents racing through his blood, and he had to clear his throat and look away. Snape was smirking when he did turn back, probably proud that he possessed the ability to make Harry do that.  
  
“Well, then, in that case, I can see that my help isn’t needed,” said Dumbledore, and he reached out as if he was going to close the Floo connection from his side. “By noon tomorrow, remember, Severus.”  
  
Snape nodded fiercely at the fireplace, as if he wanted Dumbledore to simply go away, and then turned back around and frowned at Harry.  
  
“What is this potion?” Harry asked. “And why do you think I need to stay with you?”  
  
“I don’t want you to tell things to Albus that you refuse to tell me,” Snape said, folding his arms and giving Harry a frown harsh enough to make him flinch again. “I want to talk to you. And I want you to help me brew.”  
  
“Look, I don’t think you know exactly what I’m good at,” said Harry, raising his hands in self-defense. “But Potions isn’t one of those things. If you want me to help, then the poor person who needs this potion is going to be vomiting for the next seven days.”  
  
Snape laughed harshly, and bent down so that he could put his big nose right in Harry’s face. Harry let his eyes cross, and Snape drew back, although he left one hand cupped in the air as if he was going to grasp and twist something invisible.  
  
“The potion is a healing one,” said Snape. “Albus told me that a friend of his, one who’s lived a long time, has acquired a stubborn infection. Unfortunately, the magic that preserves his life means he can’t take most ordinary potions.”  
  
Harry blinked. “Would this person be Nicholas Flamel?”  
  
Snape froze for a second, and Harry wondered if he would berate him for knowing the secret, even though Snape ought to be happy that he did. Instead, he laughed and pulled Harry out of the chair.  
  
Harry caught his breath. Being this close to Snape was dizzying, even with his head bent down so he was looking at Harry from beneath his chin this time. Still, he was smiling, and his fingers were exploring casually down Harry’s shoulders and sides.  
  
“Another thing you know,” Snape whispered. “Another thing that you have no business knowing, and that I won’t ask you about.” His fingers tightened on Harry’s hips for a second, and Harry’s face flamed as he remembered the way Snape had held him there while he thrust into him.  
  
If Snape was interested in embarrassing Harry, however, he didn’t let on as he released him and retreated a few steps. “Yes, it is Nicholas Flamel. And the potion is simple to brew, in a way. At least, I can do it quickly. But I meant what I said about needing the multiple ingredients from the Forbidden Forest and needing time to prepare them.” He sighed a little. “You’ll come with me because you can at least pick what I tell you to pick, dice what I tell you to dice, and provide me company.”  
  
“And that way, I won’t sneak off and try to destroy the Horcrux and return to my own time while your back is turned, right?” Harry muttered. It made sense. He just didn’t know why he had to suffer through this. Snape’s weird obsession.  
  
Snape raised his eyebrows and nodded. “If you think you could return to your own time safely or happily while this business between us is still unsettled, then you are considerably less intelligent than I thought you were.”  
  
“Maybe I am,” Harry said, and met Snape’s open stare. “I’m not nearly as special as you think I am, anyway. You’re mistaken if you think that I could do half the things you believe I can, if you want more from me than a few hours of athletic sex.”  
  
Snape gave him a serene smile. “And why would I pay attention to that when you tell it to me? Either you are telling the truth and so are too stupid to realize your own value, or you’re lying and trying to convince me to let you go so you can return to your own time without guilt. Either way, I have no reason to listen.”  
  
“ _Listen_ ,” Harry snapped, flushing even as he did so. “I’m not my mum. I can’t be. There’s no way this can be healthy, even assuming that I wanted to stay and let you do whatever you wanted to me.”  
  
“You speak as though I would cut you up and deposit your body parts in some unnamed potion,” Snape murmured, his hand briefly closing on Harry’s hip again. “I won’t, I promise you. The potion would at least have a name, and be one that needed the finest ingredients.”  
  
“ _Snape_ —”  
  
“You haven’t said my first name sincerely yet, you know,” said Snape, and looked steadily at him for a moment. “I’d like you to.”  
  
“Why? So you can replay it in an embarrassing way in front of Dumbledore?”  
  
Snape smiled again. Harry wondered why all his attempts to infuriate the man and make him let go only ended up amusing him. Harry was sure that wouldn’t have been the case if he had tried to sound this way in front of the younger Snape. “I hardly expect you to moan it. I want to hear what it sounds like, and nothing else.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. It was all too clear that he wasn’t getting away right now anyway, promises of horrible havoc wreaked on potions or not, so he nodded reluctantly and muttered, “Severus.”  
  
Snape’s breath caught, and his eyes brightened, and for a single moment, he looked dazedly at Harry, as though that had been spoken in the heat of sex after all. Harry stifled the temptation to wave a hand in front of his eyes and make him snap out of it.  
  
“That was something I wanted to hear,” Snape said, and then moved away from Harry towards the door of the room, cocking his head. “We need to go into the Forbidden Forest first. Will you come of your own free will, or do I need to draw you?”  
  
Harry frowned, considered for a second what that might mean, and then shrugged and caught up with Snape. “You’re still strange. Even if you don’t turn into the man I knew, I thought you ought to know that.”  
  
“Strangeness,” said Snape, still walking as steadily as a machine through the corridors of Hogwarts towards the outer gates, “might get me what I want where convention would not.”  
  
He caught Harry’s eye. Harry looked away with his gut churning, and made sure that he made no noise when Snape’s hand fell on his wrist, as if accidentally.  
  
*  
  
Snape’s list of ingredients seemed to cover most of a scroll, even though Harry hadn’t seen him write anything down when he was talking to Dumbledore. The scroll was just suddenly  _there_ , in his hands, as they worked their way through clumps of thicket, groups of trees standing so close to each other that Harry didn’t know how a shadow could get through them, and green trails of moss.  
  
Snape saw him looking at the trails, and pulled Harry away and towards a large tree, almost an oak, that he bent down and gathered a white piece of bark from. “Don’t follow the trails,” he warned him.  
  
“What made them?” Harry took another look at the trails, wondering. They were all completely smooth and green and the same width. He would have thought it was the wheels of a Muggle vehicle if he didn’t know better.  
  
“Serpents.”  
  
Harry blinked and turned around. “Some kind that my Parseltongue wouldn’t save me from?”  
  
Snape snorted, looked at his list again, and rolled the scroll up with a snap of his wrist, depositing it in his pocket again as he made his way towards the depths of the Forest. “They might listen to you and laugh at you for a bit before they lunged. But no, I don’t think anything in the bloody Forest is  _safe_ from them.”  
  
And he refused to say anything more about the snakes, no matter how Harry pestered him. He just had to look at the green trails and wonder as they left them and went more and more into the lightless part of the Forest.  
  
Harry cast a nonverbal  _Lumos_ as soon as the darkness got too thick. Snape tensed ahead of him, and Harry wondered if that had been the wrong thing to do. He’d been in the Forest plenty of times, but not during this time period, and he might not have gone this deep.  
  
Snape cast his own light spell too, though, and turned around. Harry tried to avoid the sight of his face, so strange and shadowed with the way he held his wand.  
  
“You have no idea what it does to me,” Snape whispered, “to see you more curious about the animals that made those trails than curious about  _me_. The man you slept with. The first man you slept with, if I’m reading your signals aright.”  
  
Harry scowled. “You’re the only person I know who would try to set up some sort of competition between those things.”  
  
“Nevertheless.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. “This is another one of those questions you just want me to answer because you  _want_ the answer, right? Because you’re so interested in hearing it? Like the way you were interested in hearing me say your first name?”  
  
Snape didn’t move. He only stood there with his wand blazing away and his eyes on Harry.  
  
Harry told himself he was giving in because, with Snape so distracted, something was more likely to sneak up on them and try to make a meal out of them, but honestly, he didn’t know the reason why for certain. “All right. I’m curious because I haven’t seen that kind of snake before, and I wanted to know if I could do something about it if one of them attacked me. But you—I know there’s nothing I can do to make you hurt less than you do.”  
  
Snape’s eyes fluttered fast. Then he said, in a deep murmur, “You have an interesting notion of what you can and cannot do. And what matters.”  
  
“You either want me to stay with you, which I can’t promise,” Harry continued relentlessly, “or you want me to leave and come back, which I can’t do either, and which probably wouldn’t satisfy you. Be honest, Snape—”  
  
Snape lifted his head, and as irritated as Harry was, there was a pride in that motion he had to acknowledge.   
  
“Fine,  _Severus_ , be honest,” he said, and tried to ignore the pleased, close-mouthed smile Snape gave him. “That wouldn’t satisfy you. Some kind of permanent relationship would, but I’ve explained the reasons why I can’t give you that. And a fling wouldn’t be good for  _either_ of us. It’s best if I leave now, now that we’ve slept together and had that one experience.”  
  
Snape’s eyes were distant, as though he was listening to someone else, maybe Dumbledore, and not Harry at all. “You will not remain a little longer and give me the chance to convince you some more?”  
  
“No offense,” said Harry, and Snape stiffened in a way that meant he was probably going to be offended anyway, “but I think sex can’t be better than the time we already had. So more sex isn’t going to convince me.”  
  
Snape gave a small, pleased sound. “I was not talking about that. I was talking about conversations. Doing things like brewing potions together and seeing how well we fit. Letting me into secrets that you might as well reveal because you’ve revealed so much already. All of that.”  
  
Harry flung his arms up. “I don’t know what you want me to  _tell_ you. I already told you that I’m not good at brewing, it’s not something I enjoy, and it’s not something that’s going to bond me further to you. And I’ve already been an idiot. Telling you more secrets would just involve me being an idiot some more. Why should I  _do_ that?”  
  
“Because,” said Snape, his voice deep and calm, “you don’t want to hurt me. I don’t think you want to hurt anyone,” he added, as Harry opened his mouth to argue that, “but I am the one in front of you. And you owe me for the jarring end that you put to our interlude earlier.”  
  
Harry blinked for long moments. He wondered what he would say, what he  _should_ say. All that reasonable, common-sense arguments seemed to make so little sense, at least when it came to the way that Snape was approaching things. Harry looked at him and his common sense went out the window.   
  
 _As if I didn’t know that already._  
  
Harry opened his mouth. He thought he could try appealing with Snape’s first name, not under protest, and seeing whether that would win him anything. If Snape affected him, he ought to be able to affect Snape.  
  
But that was when Harry’s earlier guess proved right, and something large and black and cat-like leaped out of the Forbidden Forest onto Snape’s back. As it pinned him to the ground, it raised one paw that seemed designed to grab his throat and bend his head back and choke him.  
  
Harry charged into battle. And the traitorous thought jumped up and down in the back of his mind.  
  
 _This is one way to avoid brewing a bloody potion, anyway._


	10. Reeling

The beast raised its head from Snape’s neck and snarled at Harry as he ran towards it. Harry took that as a good sign. It meant that he  _could_ distract the thing, that it wasn’t some beast sent specifically to stalk Snape.   
  
Harry was already drawing his wand. He had a specific spell in mind, and he slipped it in between Snape and the cat with a sharp flick of his wrist. “ _Abscido!_ ”  
  
The spell left Snape lying safely on the ground, but it seized the cat and whirled it away from Snape, making it let out a loud, indignant cry as it went. Harry smiled, a bit breathlessly. Hermione was the one who had taught him the Separation Charm. You had to concentrate pretty hard on the two things you wanted to separate since you couldn’t add the word in Latin to the charm, but it worked. Harry had just wanted to separate things that had fur and things that didn’t, and that was easy.  
  
The cat got its feet under it and came springing back at Harry, so wild and fierce that Harry did stumble back one step. But his retreat only lasted until he could raise a Shield Charm, and the cat rebounded off it with a disgusted hiss. It landed on all fours and began to stalk around him, as if looking for a weak spot in the shield. It ignored Snape entirely.  
  
Harry nodded. The cast was looking for a prey animal it could take without trouble, and that somewhat increased the chances that he and Snape could both get away from it. “Can you run back to Hogwarts and make sure you don’t attract its attention while you do?” he called out to Snape.  
  
“I’m not going to leave you here to handle it on your own.” Snape’s voice was low and clear, and he had risen to his feet to stand beside Harry. “I’m not that much of a coward.”  
  
Harry groaned a little. The one time he would have given thanks for Slytherin self-preservation, and of course Snape would try to resist. “Come on, you can go,” he said, and strengthened the shield again as the cat crouched down. “I just want to make sure you don’t get hurt.  _You’re_ the one who’s hindering me in this situation, given that I’m the one with Auror training.”  
  
“And I fought as a Death Eater.” Snape’s voice was strange, hard. “You don’t need to think that you have all the combat prowess in the clearing at the moment.”  
  
Harry turned his head to argue, and the cat leaped.  
  
It came flying  _over_  the shield, legs spread out and foreclaws clutching. It landed right next to Harry and lashed out with one paw. Harry spun desperately to avoid it, although he could feel some of the claws shred the skin on his thigh, dangerously close to the femoral artery. He swore and lifted his wand.  
  
Snape got there before he could, casting a spell Harry didn’t know that sent the cat flying back into the woods again. Harry could only track where it had gone by the snarling sounds that came from it. Snape’s spell had pinned it against a tree and was slowly crushing it, to judge from the wails.  
  
“Stop!” Harry yelled, unable to listen to the spell any longer, the shrieks and the noise of bones breaking. “You’re killing it!”  
  
“I thought that was the idea,” Snape said, turning his head and looking at Harry with a grave stare. “So that it couldn’t kill us.” But he flicked his wand, and Harry heard the bones stop snapping. It sounded as though the cat had slumped to the ground.  
  
“I just—not torture.” Harry shut his eyes. He probably shouldn’t have called Snape a coward. That had made him want to prove he knew lots of Death Eater spells, or powerful curses, or something. Harry had never seen the magic he’d used before, and didn’t know if it would fit into the category of curse or not.   
  
“You saved my life.”  
  
Harry slowly opened his eyes again. He had thought Snape would have stalked off in a huff about Harry getting upset that he’d hurt the cat, but instead he was in front of Harry, watching him. The only thing that made Harry relax was the critical look in Snape’s eyes. He might be realizing they weren’t perfectly suited to each other after all.  
  
“I couldn’t let you die like that,” Harry said.  
  
“Ah.” Snape nodded. “Because of the timeline.”  
  
Harry stared and looked at him. He had missed the faint bitterness in Snape’s voice before, but there was no mistaking it now. “No! Of course not. Because no one deserves to die like that. And no animal deserves to be hurt like that, either,” he added. He listened, but he couldn’t hear the cat’s crying anymore. It had probably slipped off into the forest.  
  
“I will overlook the insinuation against my character,” Snape murmured. His eyes were bright, and he reached out in a way that would have given Harry plenty of time to avoid the touch if he wanted to. Harry didn’t try, but he did eye Snape and shake his head a little.  
  
“You do care about me,” Snape whispered.  
  
Harry sighed. “It’s a way I care about other people, too, though. You want—you want this exclusive commitment from me, and it’s just not going to happen. I can’t stay here because of the timeline and because I have friends back in my own time. I can’t be your permanent lover for the same reasons. I can’t go away and come back because there’s no way to be sure I would always arrive at the same time, and it would change history, and a fling would prove wearing for both of us.”  
  
“That is the first sensible thing you have said.” Snape inclined his head. “No, I do not want a mere  _fling_. It would be hard to sustain, and while I was willing to sleep with you once in hopes that it might turn into a more permanent…affair, I would not want a succession of single nights.”  
  
Harry nodded. “Right. So you agree that the best thing for me to do would be to go back to my own time?”  
  
Snape’s face was cool and implacable, blank. “You wish to do this? You agree that what we had meant nothing?”  
  
Harry rubbed his face. He wondered why he was the one who had to make all these judgments, when he was so  _bad_ at them. Yes, they should have sent Hermione back in time. “Not  _nothing_. Just not everything. Not enough to make me abandon my time period and friends for it.”  
  
“If you could have something here that you never had in your own time…”  
  
“I already have,” said Harry, and although it was simply the truth, it was rather nice to bask in the glow of Snape’s smile. But then he sighed and came back to their problem. “But that isn’t—enough. It can’t be.”  
  
Snape only nodded, after a long moment when Harry thought he could feel his heartbeat reaching into the earth, about to start a quake, and turned away. “We still need to find the ingredients for the potion that Albus wants me to make.”  
  
“There’s that,” said Harry, and turned to gathering with a will. If they could think of something else, then he thought Snape would quickly get used to the habit. He had got used to so many other bad things in Harry’s time, why wouldn’t this be sort of the same thing?  
  
 _I don’t want him to have to get used to something else bad. He’s done enough of it._  
  
But he was so powerless to prevent it, Harry thought, he would have to treat it the way he did the murder of his parents: something he wished with all his heart hadn’t happened, but inevitable.  
  
*  
  
“I will still need your help at holding the temperature of the fire under the cauldron steady.”  
  
Harry blinked. He had deposited the ingredients in Snape’s lab, the ones that Snape had assigned him to chop chopped, but then he’d begun to leave. The idea that Snape might have wanted him around, genuinely, to help with the potion had never occurred to him.  
  
“I meant it when I said I was bad at Potions,” he ventured after a moment.  
  
“It is good that I will be here to supervise you, then,” Snape said, not even glancing up from where he was chopping up some small petals into what was practically a mist, the cuts were so fine.  
  
Harry shook his head. Well, if Snape wanted to deal with a mess all over his lab, that was his prerogative. Harry wouldn’t be here to help him clean it up or deal with the consequences, anyway. He turned and brought the fire to life under the cauldron, carefully raising the flames and then setting up the charm that meant they would heat the bottom of the cauldron absolutely evenly.  
  
“You can’t be that poor at Potions, if you knew to cast that spell without instruction.”  
  
Harry started a little, then shook his head as the fire almost spiked. “I’m poor at it because I have to really concentrate, and then that doesn’t leave me free to react to anything else that happens while I’m concentrating,” he muttered. He lowered the flames again. “You can’t rely on me to chop and check the fire at the same time.”  
  
“It sounds like a difficulty you could overcome.” Snape carefully sifted the misty petals into the potion, then followed them up with some of the leaves Harry had chopped. “Why haven’t you bothered?”  
  
Harry said nothing, eyes on the fire. Snape didn’t repeat the question or get offended and back off, though, the way Harry had hoped he would. He simply went on adding ingredients, pausing to stir on occasion, and then reaching behind him for something else. All the while, except for quick darting glances at the surface of the potion, his eyes remained on Harry’s face.  
  
“Because,” said Harry, “of things I can’t discuss with you.”  
  
Snape snorted. “Is there something about your potion-making abilities that is highly relevant to history? I must know this.”  
  
“Something that’s more personal,” said Harry, and carefully adjusted the heat of the flames again when Snape made a flicking gesture at him.   
  
“Then it involves me prejudicing you against the art,” said Snape, with a nod, and shrugged when Harry stared at him. “I am usually discerning about that sort of thing. You shouldn’t try so hard to keep the truth from me, Harry.”  
  
Harry turned away without answering. Yes, okay, Snape was discerning and Harry was bad at this, but he had already thought that. He didn’t know how Snape tricked the information out of him  _anyway,_ even when he was trying to be careful.   
  
“You look morose,” said Snape, and banged the stirring rod against the side of the cauldron so that Harry had to look up. “Was my future self such a terrible teacher? I will admit that I am morose myself, and impatient, but I hope I haven’t broken anyone’s spirit the way that he seems to have broken yours.”  
  
Harry sighed. “I can’t answer these questions. Any of them. And you shouldn’t care about them. I should just be another Potter to you.”  
  
Snape simply shrugged and went on stirring. Harry began to relax, a little. There was something relaxing about working on a potion with Snape, honestly. And when Snape murmured instructions to him, Harry could obey without question. It helped knowing there was an expert right there who could take care of problems as they happened, unlike the times that Harry had brewed with another student.  
  
 _And unlike when you were in the classroom with the older Snape?_  
  
Harry paused, then nodded. Honestly, he had never felt safe around Snape, even though he hadn’t thought the man would deliberately sabotage any potion. He would only react after an explosion had happened, though, to make his “point.”  
  
 _Whatever that was._  
  
“Pay attention.”  
  
Harry shook his head and did. At least that sounded like his Snape, he thought: snappish and full of power and authority. He bent his head over the cauldron, and watched the flames, and when Snape put a flower in his hand, a pink one with a twining stem that made it look as if Snape had plucked it from the ground that second, Harry followed his instructions there, too.  
  
“Crush it up. Twist it. Grind it into your palm, until you see a golden dust fall from it. That’s the pollen we need.”  
  
Harry wondered when this had become about what “we” needed, but he still did it, twisting and grinding. It was strangely soothing, he discovered. He had to work the flower with one hand only since his other one was holding his wand, ready to adjust the temperature as necessary, but he could do that without much trouble. The golden dust seemed to shower out too soon.  
  
He extended his hand to Snape, asking without words if that was the way it should look. Snape nodded curtly, and Harry held out his hand and shook it. The golden dust didn’t cling the way pollen would have, but drifted at once into the cauldron. Harry curled his fingers around the flower’s stem until he received the nod that meant Snape also wanted the flower itself in the potion, and then dropped it.  
  
“Good,” said Snape, his word barely a breath. “Now step back and get ready to cast the Stasis Charm when I tell you to.”  
  
Harry blinked—he couldn’t remember any potions, even the ones in the Half-Blood Prince’s book, that needed a Stasis Charm cast in the middle of them—but he reminded himself that that was why Snape was the Potions genius and Harry remained a novice even after years of practice. He moved back and held his wand, the incantation hovering on the edge of his tongue the way the wand hovered on the edges of his fingers.  
  
“Now,” said Snape, in a voice so calm that Harry would have believed he  _was_ absolutely calm if he hadn’t seen the way that Snape’s fingers tightened on the edge of the table.  
  
Harry cast the spell, feeling, for a moment, a thrill as keen as he did when he watched a spell strike down an opponent in battle. This spell only hit the cauldron and froze the liquid in mid-bubble, but it was still similar.  
  
“Now,” said Snape, and Harry glanced at him, wondering if he was about to indicate that Harry should cast the Stasis Charm again. But instead, Snape was calmly walking towards him, one hand stretched out. Harry didn’t point the wand at him, but it was a near thing. He didn’t think he would like whatever Snape was about to do.  
  
It was nothing he hadn’t done before, though. He simply took up Harry’s chin and turned his face back and forth, staring critically into his eyes. Then he nodded and stepped back.  
  
“You being naturally, inherently bad at Potions,” he said, “is as much bollocks as lots of other things you’ve said.”  
  
Harry scowled. “I never said that I was naturally bad at Potions. Just that I was.” He looked at the cauldron again, and saw golden numbers, like the ones on a clock face, flickering into being beyond the edge of it. Snape had cast a  _Tempus_ Charm, but not one of the ones that Harry was most familiar with. Instead of telling the time, it looked as though it was counting down to something.  
  
And it was almost at zero.   
  
“Shouldn’t you go tend to your potion?” he asked, and motioned towards it with his head.  
  
“Bad at something usually means naturally bad,” Snape pursued, in a calm tone.  
  
“Do you go around analyzing all the ways that people use the word ‘naturally’ or something?” Harry demanded. “Just—shut up and go tend to your potion.”  
  
“When the clock reaches zero,” said Snape, but he did step back around the table and flick his wand at the potion. For a moment, it bubbled sullenly, and Harry almost thought it would overflow. But then it did settle back down, and Snape shook his head and turned silently to study Harry. “You aren’t naturally bad at Potions if you can follow instructions and don’t have a fear of the art.”  
  
“Why would anyone be  _afraid_ of it?” Harry asked. “I mean, do a lot of students witness explosions before they come to Hogwarts or something?” He knew that, in his time, lots of people had been afraid of Potions because of Snape, but that wasn’t the same as being naturally afraid of it, either.  
  
 _And now I sound like him._  
  
“The rumors of explosions, being around open flames, having to do magic without using their wands often,” said Snape simply. He was studying Harry. “You don’t need to use Potions often in your job as an Auror, of course.”  
  
“No,” Harry agreed. He knew why the Aurors required NEWT’s in Potions—because they needed to be able to recognize the common poisons and effects of intoxicants on the murder victims and criminals they dealt with—but they didn’t use it often enough for him to think it was worth it. They could have learned the same thing through Healing magic, Harry thought, and Healers would have been good teachers and could have taught them other things, too.  
  
“Hmm,” said Snape. Then he turned back to the potion smoothly, at the same moment as a huge spout of liquid rose from the surface and fountained over the side of the cauldron, moving quickly towards Snape.  
  
“Snape!” Harry barked, because it seemed sheer surprise had kept Snape’s feet rooted to the floor. He rolled forwards and snatched Snape out of the way like he had when Slytherin’s bowl attacked, and flicked another Stasis Charm at the potion at the same time.  
  
The bubbling stopped and the liquid remained in the cauldron, much to Harry’s relief. He rolled over and made sure Snape was all right. He looked a little stunned, but there was no potion on him, not even a bruise.  
  
Then Snape smiled.   
  
Harry stepped back and narrowed his eyes. “What are you plotting now?” he muttered.  
  
“It worked,” said Snape simply, and spent a moment considering his robes. “Granted, I would have liked it better if you hadn’t wrinkled my robes when you grabbed me, but I can hardly complain that much when it got you to touch me again.” He gave Harry a smug look.   
  
“Tell me what you’re going on about.” Harry gripped his wand tightly and gave another glance at the potion. It appeared completely normal now. He did have to wonder if Snape had ruined it when he’d told Harry to cast the original Stasis Charm, but that would suggest Snape cared more about talking to him than he did about completing the potion in the right way.  
  
That…wasn’t the Snape Harry knew.  
  
“I wanted to see how you would react to an emergency,” said Snape simply. “Casting that Stasis Charm and releasing the magic exactly when I did would cause an explosion. I knew that. I also thought you would react in an instant and choose the right course instinctively. The right course was another Stasis Charm. Events proved me correct.”  
  
Harry clenched his teeth. “You had  _no idea_ that I would know. You could have caught us  _both_ in the explosion.”  
  
“But I did not. You did the right thing. Which proves that you have some level of talent in Potions.”  
  
Harry stared at him. “You would go  _that_ far to prove a point that doesn’t matter  _anyway_?”  
  
“It matters to me,” Snape corrected him, and his eyes flashed for a moment. “I could not stay permanently with someone who was so bad at my art that they flailed about and screamed and caused explosions on a regular basis. It is enough for me to know that you have some skill at it. I would not expect you to exert that skill regularly, but I would want you not to be incompetent.”  
  
Harry massaged his forehead for a moment. He wondered what would have happened if Snape hadn’t told him about the Stasis Charm. Snape had gone back to stirring the liquid in the cauldron, and adding a few fine white hairs that might have come from a unicorn, his gaze never straying from Harry.  
  
“I wouldn’t have known what to do if not for you telling me to cast that first Stasis Charm,” he finally said, not looking at Snape.   
  
“But then you did,” said Snape, as if that was really the only thing that mattered.  
  
Maybe to Snape, with his bizarre obsession with Harry, it did. Harry wondered if it was sort of like Voldemort’s obsession with him. Voldemort might hate Harry for destroying him as a baby, sure, but he had done other things like make up elaborate plots that had no purpose except to let him confront Harry.   
  
 _I wish I knew what it was that made people have bizarre obsessions with me, so I could stop it._  
  
Harry sighed. He was unlikely to get that wish. He turned back to face Snape, who looked at him with a calm face. He was stirring furiously, and then he broke the glass stirring rod and threw both halves into the potion, but he never bothered looking away from Harry, as if he had to make sure Harry wouldn’t disappear between one blink and the next.  
  
“I don’t have much talent at Potions,” Harry said. “Maybe I should say that instead of saying that I’m bad at them.”  
  
“That would be acceptable,” said Snape, and stepped back from the cauldron, watching the potion whirling in it. It was green, then red, and then it turned into a sort of devouring whirlpool that seemed to lead all the way to the bottom of the cauldron. Harry had to look away before he started to feel dizzy staring into it. “I can teach you better if you can admit that there’s not some barrier to your talent.”  
  
“And I’m not staying.” Harry was starting to wonder why he had stayed this long, honestly. In an attempt to be a decent person? But Snape was never going to see sense. “I’m sorry that I—I did whatever it was that made you attracted to me.”  
  
“I’m attracted to you simply because of who you are.” Snape gave a shrug with one shoulder as the potion settled into a smooth blue glow, looking like pictures of the tropical water that Harry had sometimes seen on the Dursleys’ telly. “And I think that you are not _un_ attracted to me.”  
  
“No,” said Harry, staring at the floor. “Or I would never have slept with you. But I still have to leave. And maybe doing it fast would be best.” He took a step towards the door that led out into Snape’s main room.  
  
But it slammed shut, and Snape came striding around the cauldron. Harry turned wearily towards him, his head pounding. He would just have to—  
  
His mind came to a halt when he saw that Snape’s wand was still in his hand, and this time, pointed at him.  
  
“What makes you think I would allow you to leave?” Snape asked softly.


	11. A Lucky Accident

“I don’t understand why you think you can keep me here,” Harry said, and his eyes remained on Snape’s wand. Looking at his eyes or his face was a bad idea right now, both in terms of distracting Harry from his next move and—well, in terms of distracting Harry from his next move. He couldn’t let himself be trapped by Snape’s pleading to stay with him any more than he could by a spell Snape had managed on him because he was unwary.  
  
“You are here at the same moment as a younger version of you is in the Muggle world,” Snape said calmly. “Correct?”  
  
“It’s an unstable situation that can only endure because—”  
  
Snape continued as if he hadn’t heard Harry. “It should remain stable long enough. You can be here and in that place at the same time. The other version of you will grow up and become the Harry Potter of the future. I think that I can mask my feelings and show the false ones well enough.” He shrugged with one shoulder, which had the effect of leaving his pointed wand rock-steady. “And who knows? The younger version of you might be so annoying that I don’t think I’ll have to feign very long.”  
  
“The future I came from will be destroyed,” Harry snapped.  
  
“There will still be a version of you to grow up,” said Snape. “There won’t be another version of me because I wasn’t the one who traveled in time. But eventually, we’ll reach the time period when the younger version of you vanishes to go back in time. And then you can take his place.”  
  
Harry shook his head. It sounded horribly plausible, and if he had been a completely different person, he might have been tempted by it. But precisely because he hadn’t had many lovers, physical passion wasn’t going to be something that could hold him here by itself.  
  
And Snape, interesting and even fascinating as he might be, hadn’t really endeared himself to Harry, either.  
  
“I won’t stay,” said Harry quietly, shifting his grip on his wand. “The only reason that I didn’t strike back at you before was because I didn’t want to hurt you, and I thought it would mess up the timeline if I did. But at this rate, you’re going to do more damage to the timeline than a mere duel between us would do. Get out of my way, or I’ll move you.”  
  
Snape’s eyes were alight. “You were an Auror,” he murmured, and began to move to the left. Harry didn’t move, but tilted his head to watch him, so Snape stopped after a few steps. “I was a Death Eater. Shall we find out whose wand is  _truly_ stronger?”  
  
 _He even sounds excited by that,_ Harry thought, resigned, and whipped in a smart circle, his wand striking out towards the cauldron he had chosen as his first weapon. Borne by his nonverbal Blasting Curse, it somersaulted end over end and, although it didn’t strike Snape in the stomach and knock out his air as had been Harry’s first intention, it did tumble him off his feet.  
  
Harry was already jumping as Snape stretched his wand arm along the floor, and even if he  _did_ somersault end over end like an idiot or the cauldron, he managed to escape the curse. It destroyed the legs of one table instead, and tipped it over. Harry immediately kicked it into Snape’s way to serve as one more object that would hinder him, and headed for the door.  
  
Flying splinters of burned wood warned him the barrier hadn’t lasted long. Harry spun forwards, then sideways, and the hisses of spells went past him and slammed into the door. One was meant to lock it, Harry thought, but the Stunner that followed that was of such force that it broke the lock and slammed the door open.  
  
Harry went with his good luck, heading straight for the exit from Snape’s rooms. This time, though, Snape used a spell that was the one he meant to use, and it sealed the door by Transfiguring it into part of the stone wall.  
  
Harry knew he could perform the Transfiguration that would open that part of the wall. He also knew he wouldn’t get the  _chance_ to perform it quickly enough to make a difference. He reversed, kicking the table in the center of the room into Snape’s path. He heard a bang, although he wasn’t sure if it had caught Snape on his hip or leg, and then heard him grunt in pain.  
  
Again a curse came for him, probably one that was meant to entrap him; again Harry dived forwards, and it splintered the wall above him, sending pieces and parts flying. Harry twisted, so fast and evasive that it wrenched a gasp of pain from his own throat, and found himself next to the bookshelves. For an instant, no more, he was trapped against them.  
  
It was enough for Snape to use a curse Harry had never heard before, but which filled his throat with a warning burning taste. A second later, he was bent over, vomiting.  
  
Snape moved casually towards him. Harry tensed the muscles in his neck, and Snape sighed a little. “I think that we’ve both proved our point,” he said. “Why don’t you calm down, and I’ll use the countercurse? Otherwise, it lasts as long as my will to keep it going does.”  
  
Harry didn’t answer, and Snape seemed to realize that might be a problem, because his eyes narrowed slightly. Then, just once, they flickered down to his wand and away from Harry, as he considered a possible solution to the problem.  
  
Harry twisted his head up and vomited full into Snape’s face. As he jerked away, trying instinctively to protect his eyes, Harry drew his wand, seized the moment between one clenching heave and another, and Stunned Snape. Snape went down with a rustle and a crash, nearly hitting his head on the wall. But he didn’t.   
  
He did fall unconscious, though, and the moment he did, Harry’s vomiting stopped.  
  
Harry straightened back up, breathing so hard that he wondered for a second if he would be able to get out of here. Then he shook his head. Snape wouldn’t wake up right away from the Stunner, and Harry made sure that it would be harder for him when he did by Summoning his wand and carefully laying it on the table near the hearth.  
  
 _I have to go._  
  
That caused a prickle of guilt to start to life in his gut, because he didn’t like the notion of leaving someone he’d slept with without saying goodbye. But he knew exactly what kind of answer Snape would give him if he tried to say it, so Harry stepped over Snape and made his way towards the door, ready to Transfigure it back to wood.  
  
It opened before he could get there, and Harry was bracing himself for a quick explanation followed by an  _Obliviate_ before it occurred to him that not everyone would be welcome to simply walk through the wall into Snape’s quarters. Not to mention that not everyone would have the skill to change the door back from the wall.  
  
He hesitated, and Dumbledore stepped into the room. He looked from Harry to the motionless Snape for a moment, and then sighed. “Lovers’ quarrel?” he asked, with such mildness that Harry flinched.  
  
Harry sighed and braced himself for the truth. “I’m a time traveler, sir. I came—I came here to do one specific mission, and then I ran into Severus and he delayed me and changed things. I should have left already, but I kept finding reasons to stay, and I thought I would have to hurt him to get past him.” He stared down at the motionless Snape for a second. “I did.”  
  
“Well. I can’t say that I’m surprised.”  
  
Harry blinked. No, he could see why if anyone would figure out he was a time traveler without being told before this, it would be Dumbledore, but he hadn’t expected him to take it so calmly. He especially didn’t expect it when Dumbledore looked around the room and cast a spell Harry didn’t know.  
  
An orange blaze of light answered him from behind a couch. Dumbledore walked across the room towards it and bent down. A truly terrible crack sounded, and Harry jumped. Dumbledore only smiled as he stood up again.  
  
“Excuse an old man’s creaking knees,” he said, and held out the silver bowl with Slytherin’s symbol on it. “Was this what you came looking for?”  
  
“Sort of,” said Harry, and then shook his head. If he just took the bowl and walked away because he didn’t want to tell Dumbledore about Horcruxes, then that would be a much worse betrayal than leaving without saying goodbye. “But it turned out not to be. There’s a different artifact I need to locate and destroy. Leave it for him, would you? He wanted it.” Harry swallowed. “And tell him I’m sorry.”  
  
“Unless I’m greatly mistaken,” said Dumbledore, turning over the bowl in one hand, and peering down at the S on the side with interest, “you’ll be telling him that yourself.”  
  
Harry sighed. “Even if I saw him again in the future, he would never forgive me.”  
  
“I didn’t mean that.” Dumbledore lifted his head to meet Harry’s gaze again, and his eyes were twinkling like mechanical Muggle stars. “Do you notice something different about this bowl from when you first saw it?” He held it out.  
  
Harry looked at it, blinking and baffled. No, he couldn’t see anything. The silver was still there, still untarnished, and there was no change in the marking. “I don’t know what you mean, sir.”  
  
“It’s changed color,” said Dumbledore. “I saw it the first time I met you, you know.” Harry flushed when he recalled that, but Dumbledore went on serenely. “There was a ripple of light to it, as if it was reflecting a sort of depth then, that it doesn’t have now. With your permission, I will perform a series of spells on it to find out why.”  
  
Harry shook his head. “It really doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to Severus.”  
  
“I will take that as permission, then,” Dumbledore said, and gestured with his wand to the bowl. Again it blazed with orange light, and then it grew darker around Slytherin’s symbol, in a way that reminded Harry of fast-growing mold. Dumbledore gave a little sigh.  
  
“Some powerful wizards,” he said, while Harry edged towards the door and Dumbledore’s wand performed a series of spells faster than Harry’s eye could follow, “are unfortunately dedicated to the notion of protecting their artifacts from common use even after their death. If they can’t use them anymore, then they’ll make sure no one else can. It’s selfish.”  
  
Harry hesitated near the door. He had barely ever heard Dumbledore that angry, he thought, except when something threatened Hogwarts. He wondered if Dumbledore didn’t like the bowl just because it had belonged to Slytherin.  
  
Then he thought of what Dumbledore was really saying, and he recognized one of the charms that Dumbledore had performed on the bowl. “You’re saying—you’re saying that the bowl affected Severus somehow, sir?” he breathed, taking a step back towards him.  
  
“Did Severus manage to summon Slytherin’s spirit?” Dumbledore set the bowl down on the nearest table, and considered it some more. Then his wand flicked one more time, and something curled around the bowl, spitting like a snake. If it was speaking Parseltongue, though, Harry couldn’t understand it.  
  
“Yes,” said Harry cautiously. “He wanted to learn Parseltongue. He thought he could get the spirit to teach him.”  
  
“I thought it was something like that.” Dumbledore’s pattern made a cross in the air above the bowl, followed by a circle, and with a sound louder than his creaking knees, the dark thing coiled around the bowl vanished. So did the discoloration that Harry had thought of as mold, and the bowl rocked in place. Dumbledore turned to Harry and smiled. “It should be safe now.”  
  
“I don’t understand.” Harry was getting tired of saying that, but it was only literal. He  _didn’t_ understand. He took the bowl and turned it back and forth in his hands. The ripple of light in the sides didn’t change as he moved it, which probably meant it was some inherent property of the bowl that was supposed to be there. “What did it do to Severus?”  
  
“An acceleration of his emotions,” said Dumbledore calmly. “I’ve seen the like, when a portrait of Slytherin near the dungeons was disturbed by Gryffindor students and cast a curse that made them grow extremely angry at each other over small things. Then they’d forgiven each other in fifteen minutes, and then they were discussing complex things that most of the time, only adults would care about.” Dumbledore chuckled. “It was interesting, to hear third-year Gryffindor students wrestling with the state of the Ministry.”  
  
Harry blinked at him. “But they didn’t age?”  
  
“Not physically.” Dumbledore tucked his hands over his belly in a way that made it clear he wasn’t going to give Harry any more information, and just watched him over his glasses, with an encouraging smile.  
  
Harry turned and stared at the motionless Snape, frowning a little. “So—say that he was attracted to me, and he might—he might have developed feelings for me really fast,” he muttered. “Faster than he would normally have.”  
  
“Yes,” said Dumbledore, nodding. “The emotional development of months, weeks, or years compressed into a short span of time.” He paused and eyed Harry shrewdly for a moment, but Harry didn’t have anything in particular to say. It was Dumbledore who went on, his voice a little stern. “What he felt was authentic. Only accelerated. It  _could_ have developed, just as the argument I told you about, and the concern those young Gryffindors felt over Ministry politics, could have happened. It was only that they couldn’t have happened in that short an amount of time.”  
  
Harry didn’t know what to say to that, either. He turned the bowl over in his hand for lack of anything better to do, then put it back down on the table that Dumbledore had taken it from.  
  
“It still means that I have to leave,” he said.  
  
Dumbledore didn’t nod or smile or do anything else encouraging this time. He only gave Harry a patient look, and Harry rushed to fill the silence with explanations.  
  
“It’s going to be even worse for him, when he wakes up and realizes what the bowl did to him. It’s—I know that he values his ability to act on his own. There’s lots of situations where he can’t, where he has to do what someone else tells him, but I think he didn’t feel like that with me. He thought it was all his own idea, and I was the only one not cooperating. When he finds out he was under the magical control of an artifact…” Harry shook his head.  
  
“I can understand not wanting to be in the same room with him,” said Dumbledore in a musing voice. “But in the same time period?”  
  
Harry scowled at him. “Surely you understand that I have to safeguard the timeline, and go back the way I came.”  
  
“There are different ways of going and coming,” said Dumbledore placidly again,   
  
“That doesn’t tell me anything at  _all_ ,” Harry snapped.  
  
“No,” Dumbledore agreed. “You are the one who must make the decision as to what you will do, of course.” He paused, while Harry ran a hand through his hair and said nothing. “You seem to know Severus. Has it occurred to you what it would do to him if someone he found himself open to left without saying goodbye?”  
  
Harry scowled at the floor. “I assumed he would take away his own memories once he figured out what had happened,” he muttered. “Either to put them in a Pensieve, or with a Memory Charm.”  
  
“I do not think he would wish to,” said Dumbledore. “He has never done that with memories of others he hated.”  
  
Harry jerked his head up and glared at Dumbledore. “You said that he was really attracted to me! That he didn’t hate me!”  
  
“I am talking about now, and the emotions that the bowl prompted,” said Dumbledore, his eyes softening. “Not even Slytherin could create genuine emotion where none existed, any more than love potions can. What he  _can_ do is make things hard to deal with. And Severus will be reeling when he awakens. Will you desert him now? What will that do to his mind, and the timeline?” The Headmaster paused, then added quietly, “What will that do to his heart?”  
  
Harry said nothing, only stood there with his head whirling.  
  
Dumbledore stepped past him, putting a hand gently on his shoulder. “You must make the choice, and do as you think best,” he said.  
  
“But what if it’s not the best for  _him_?” Harry nodded at Snape again.  
  
“Follow your heart,” Dumbledore advised him as he opened the door again. “I don’t think it can often have led you wrong.” He closed it quietly behind him.  
  
Harry stood there, wondering what he should do.  
  
But in the end, there was only ever one choice. It had been one thing when he thought he had to escape from Snape and go back home right away. It was another thing now.  
  
He cast the spells that would remove the pain from Snape’s hitting the floor, and then lifted him up and put him on the couch. He didn’t wake him, though. He covered him with a warm blanket and, after a bit of searching, found the Floo powder and summoned a house-elf through the fireplace to bring some food and tea.  
  
Then he sat down and waited for Snape to wake up.  
  
*  
  
The black eyes that met his were so cold and accusing Harry bloody well wished he  _had_ left.  
  
But he hadn’t got to be a Gryffindor by running from things. He stood up grimly, moved away from the table so that Snape could see the food and tea and eat them if he wanted to without reaching across Harry, and sat down in a chair on the other side of the room.  
  
“Dumbledore was here,” he said. Snape hadn’t moved, only watched him with the tension of a coiled snake, but Harry would have to accept that. He doubted that he would find it harder to accept than Snape’s kisses or Snape’s attempts to keep him here. “He came in just after I Stunned you. He cast some spell that let him find the bowl with Slytherin’s sign on it.” He made a gesture with his chin at the bowl, sitting on the table where Harry had left it before.   
  
“And why would he do that?” Snape’s voice crushed and ground such simple things as courtesy in it like a river smashing through earth.  
  
Harry ignored it and went on. “He said that the bowl was influencing you. Slytherin was probably annoyed when you summoned his spirit out of the bowl. Dumbledore said that the spell accelerates emotions.”  
  
Snape looked bloodless. He was no longer staring at Harry, but through him, past him. Harry, not that eager to have Snape’s attention back given that, waited, and finally Snape looked at him and hissed again.  
  
“The creation of false love? A love potion?”  
  
“No,” said Harry. “He said the spell sped up what you—could have felt naturally, if it had more time to develop. He described a spell that one of Slytherin’s portraits had cast on some third-year Gryffindors. It made them go really fast through an argument and then make it up really fast, and then they were talking about Ministry politics as though they’d developed a concern in them overnight.”  
  
Snape shut his eyes. Harry, assuming he wanted to be alone, stood up.  
  
“No,” said Snape, in a tone of simple command. If he had ever used  _that_ voice in Potions, then Harry would have obeyed him at once. He nodded, and sat down again.   
  
“It makes sense,” Snape continued, in a dreary voice, as if he was talking to himself. “The way that I could hardly control the desire, the way that I wanted to take you to bed when I had barely known you two days.”  
  
Harry nodded. He wondered how much of the Snape he had been attracted to actually existed. Perhaps the manic energy and the courage he’d had to confess his urge to seize the moment to Harry had all been a creation of the spell.  
  
 _No, wait, Dumbledore said it couldn’t make Snape do things he wouldn’t have done. But it would have taken a month or more before he did them, and I didn’t have a month to spend here._  
  
“But there is something else,” Snape whispered. “My dreams the last few nights…”  
  
Harry flushed, not sure he wanted to hear about Snape’s wet dreams. On the other hand, that was maybe a silly qualm to have when they’d actually  _had_ sex. So he tried to fasten a calm, polite smile on his face, and nodded when Snape sat up and looked through him some more.  
  
“They didn’t make sense,” Snape said, as if explaining them to an audience that he assumed to be wholly sympathetic. Of course, Harry thought he  _had_ to be more sympathetic when it came to Snape’s actions developing under the control of a spell. “I was dreaming that I saw you through smoke and dirt, and the vision was familiar. Utterly  _familiar_. You walked through rubble and came up to me. I could never hear what you were saying.” He opened his eyes and glared at Harry for a moment, as if he was responsible for the actions of his dream self.  
  
“I don’t know,” Harry said, shaking his head. “I don’t know what to tell you,” he added, when Snape’s glare made it clear that that wasn’t going to be acceptable as an answer. “I didn’t have any dreams like that.”  
  
Even when he’d been getting visions from Voldemort, he thought, he’d never had any like that, where he’d interacted with Snape. He finally shrugged and shook his head.  
  
“I might have slept with you eventually,” Snape murmured on, voice like a flowing river. “If I had spent long enough with you.”  
  
“Yeah,” Harry said quietly. “But I wouldn’t have stayed here long enough, unless I hadn’t met you at all and tried to destroy the wrong Horcrux, instead of realizing the cross was one. So…I owe you. But I wouldn’t have stayed.”  
  
“And you do not wish to stay now,” said Snape, staring at nothingness.  
  
“No,” said Harry. “It’s…it wouldn’t be the best thing for either of us, would it? I mean, not  _really_. We’d always have the memories of this between us, and tainting whatever developed. Not to mention anything about history or the timeline, but that’s the simple fact of it.”  
  
Snape shut his eyes, and said nothing. Then he nodded. “You should go,” he said.  
  
Harry stood, heart aching. “Thank you,” he said. “I’m sorry for what happened. I hope—hope you can recover.”  
  
He waited, but Snape only kept his eyes shut and his head turned away as if he didn’t want to interact with Harry, which Harry could understand. He made sure everything he might have brought here was tucked away, and then glanced back once at Snape as he left the room.  
  
Snape’s face was tense and tight, and he looked years older. Harry sighed once, thought about going over and kissing him, and decided it would be unforgivable unless Snape himself asked him for it.  
  
He shut the door quietly behind him.  
  
 _Off to find a safe place to destroy this Horcrux, and then I can return to my own time._


	12. Smoke and Rubble

There was a problem that Harry really should have thought of earlier, as he was able to admit to himself when he sat down in the corner of the Leaky Cauldron with the golden cross and stared at it. He was supposed to destroy it, because it was the Horcrux. Hermione had impressed on him several times how important that was.  
  
But it was also the artifact that he was supposed to use to get home.  
  
Harry grimaced. He supposed the simplest move was simply to get home and then have the Unspeakables destroy the Horcrux. He was still irritated with them for not having realized that the artifact they were pressing on him was one of the bloody things. Didn’t they have people in the Department of Mysteries whose job it was to sense things like that?  
  
But Hermione had also said that her research suggested that the Horcrux would be difficult to find in the present because it might have been crumbled into pieces and scattered. At least, she’d said, that would explain why the rituals she’d performed to locate the Horcrux had produced a number of random, conflicting answers. So destroying it whole, in the past, would be for the best.  
  
 _Which means I’m changing the timeline._  
  
Harry breathed out, a little, and picked up the mug of Firewhisky he’d purchased to take a sip. He should have thought more about this,  _talked_ more about this, when he was home with Hermione. It was immensely reassuring to know that the timeline would still be the same when he got home and nothing he had done with Snape had changed it—couldn’t, if Hermione was right and destroying a Horcrux back in the past wouldn’t change anything, either.   
  
 _Except getting rid of Voldemort._  
  
Harry swore and lowered his head to the table. Time travel confused him. He wished with all his might that he could have given his “gift” to locate Horcruxes to Hermione instead. She would have been wise enough to figure out it was the cross when she arrived back in 1983, and she would have destroyed it at once and discovered some other way to get home, and there would never have been this mess with Snape.  
  
 _So what should I do?_  
  
Harry lifted the cross in front of his eyes and peered at it again. There had to be a hearstblood jewel in the Department of Mysteries enchanted to pull him through time, Snape had said. That made the travel enchantment on the jewels make sense, and it meant—it  _should_ mean—that pulling one jewel out of the cross and keeping it should take him home and let him destroy the rest of the Horcrux. If it didn’t, well, at least he would go home with only one jewel and the Unspeakables could take over destroying it from there.  
  
He peered once more at the cross, and then nodded and stood up, tossing a Galleon to Tom. It was hard to make ordinary people pay attention to him, and Tom looked around suspiciously, but just like he had given the Firewhisky out to Harry after a while, he accepted the money now. His face smoothed over as he apparently came up with some mental explanation that satisfied him.  
  
 _I wish I could come up with one that would ease my guilt over Snape,_ Harry thought, and took himself outside with his cloak over his face.  
  
*  
  
Harry stood near the center of the Forbidden Forest, in a hollow dark enough that he had ringed it with fire so he could see what he was doing. He doubted most creatures would come near multiple burning fires right away.  
  
He had a moment to contemplate the Horcrux in front of him and think about what he was doing.   
  
Then he shook his head and turned the cross over. He’d chosen a heartsblood jewel near the end of one arm, on the (possibly mistaken) hypothesis that a gem far away from the body of the cross would be the least missed.  
  
When he pulled on the jewel, it came out suspiciously easily in his hand. Harry blinked and stared, but then shook his head. All right. That probably explained why the Horcrux could have been in pieces before the Unspeakables found and assembled it again. The heartsblood jewels were meant to come out. As Borgin had said, you could hold onto one and travel anywhere that another lay.  
  
Harry wrapped the jewel in a protective bubble of cool air and cotton, a spell Hermione had taught him, and then stepped forwards and laid the cross in the middle of the circle. Then he retreated until he stood among the fires, and after a few deep breaths, spoke the incantation for Fiendfyre.  
  
There was a sullen spark of red light from the center of the hollow, and then a flicker of gold, and suddenly the fire was  _there_.  
  
Harry swore as he watched the gamboling, melting demons seize the cross and hold it up. For a moment, he wondered if they would actually destroy it. Fiendfyre was rebellious, never doing anything you  _wanted_ it to. What if they flung the Horcrux away, and he lost track of it while he was subduing the flames?  
  
But then a beast that looked like a lion with the head of a crocodile opened its mouth, and the demon holding the cross gave a soundless laugh and tossed the thing into its jaws. The lion snapped those jaws shut and looked very smug, turning its head back and forth as if it wanted everyone to admire it. Harry heard a sound like melting metal, and then a faint, distant scream.  
  
Then he began to raise the cold walls that would shut in the Fiendfyre and keep it from spreading beyond the ring of bonfires he’d built and into the Forest.  
  
The minute he started the spell, the creatures in the Fiendfyre turned towards him. And then they began to run at him, burning over the grass faster than a charging dragon.  
  
Harry swore, cast the spell anyway using the calm that had been trained into him by the Aurors, and then began to run. He had to dodge between tree trunks and leap over roots, though, and when he glanced back, one particular tendril of Fiendfyre had escaped the trap. It was racing straight towards him, not even pausing to burn the branches that swung past it.  
  
If it lost interest in him, it could burn most of the Forest up. Harry turned, his wand in his hand. He would at least stop that from happening.  
  
The lion that formed out of the Fiendfyre landed in front of him with one claw raised to swat. Harry cast the spell that would raise a wall of ice to melt it in front of him, at the same time as he clutched the heartsblood jewel. The Unspeakables had told him that when he was ready to come back to his own time, he should clutch the cross and tell it to take him home.   
  
He hoped the instructions would work just as well when all that was left of the cross was one jewel.   
  
His hand closed on it and he watched the cold water pour down on the Fiendfyre lion, as he whispered, “Take me home.”  
  
The Forest and the raging fire in front of him dissolved into a dozen whirling specks of light. He saw the lion roaring at him in frustration and then exploding into a shower of sparks of its own, and he had time to smile before he felt a great force gather him up and kicked like a boot into his arse.  
  
 _Bet Snape would have enjoyed seeing me kicked like that,_ Harry thought, as he flew through time.  
  
*  
  
Harry landed on grass, to his surprise, and in an area so cold that he began to shiver. He turned around. Had the Unspeakables come up with a special area in the Department of Mysteries for him to appear in? It would be like them, although he didn’t know why they would have had to imitate the outdoors.  
  
He wasn’t inside walls. He was standing in the middle of a village, on a cold, dim night, and behind him lay what looked like a shattered wall.  
  
Dazed, Harry stared around. He reached into his pocket for the heartsblood jewel, half-expecting to find it a puddle of melted sludge. Or maybe it had cursed him, because part of Voldemort’s soul was alive in it after all, and had sent him in completely the wrong direction. He shook his head when he found the hard edges with his finger.  
  
 _Then what…_  
  
Someone was moving inside the broken house. Harry flinched and cast a Disillusionment Charm. He hoped the force of his arrival hadn’t shattered the wall. Was he in a Muggle neighborhood? He didn’t think so, from the absence of electric lights around him, but he didn’t know for sure. Maybe time-traveling magic was powerful enough to have knocked the lights out, too.  
  
But it seemed to be only one person, and they weren’t rushing outside to see what had happened. They were wandering around in the house instead. Now and then, Harry could hear a low sob. Once the figure crouched down, which Harry could clearly see through a rent in what had been the sturdy stones of the wall, and picked something up from the floor. It looked like a hairbrush, or at least it had that general shape. Then it flung it away again and began to cry and moan once more.  
  
Harry edged towards it. Maybe this was a newborn Voldemort, and he was in the future where the eighth Horcrux had resurrected him. It made as much sense as any other theory, at least right now.  
  
But while the Disillusionment Charm concealed him, Harry hadn’t bothered with any magic that would hide his sounds, and the figure sorting through the rubble spun abruptly towards him.  
  
Harry gasped, and he couldn’t have hidden it even if he had Voldemort’s wand pointed at him.  
  
It was  _Snape._ Snape even younger than Harry had seen him a few hours ago, his face so pale that it looked as though he’d put on a mask made of salt. His eyes were distended, the skin puffed around them with bags that made it obvious he’d been crying. His hands were closed into claws so extreme that they looked as if they were deformed, and no matter how he tried, Harry couldn’t take his eyes away from the awful state of them. What had Snape  _done?_ Was this what he had sunk to once Harry left?  
  
 _No, because he looks_ younger.  
  
So Harry had gone into the past, and that meant—  
  
“ _Finite Incantatem_ ,” Snape said, pointing his wand at Harry. His voice was weirdly calm for someone who looked the way he did.  
  
Harry couldn’t speak as he became visible again. He was so damn sorry that his voice would have broken if he’d tried. He looked at Snape, and shuddered, and looked away again. His hand closed on the heartsblood jewel in his pocket as he wondered if he dared try another jump, when this one had gone so spectacularly wrong. The jewel should have worked the way the Unspeakables said it would! It should have taken him  _home_ , damn it!  
  
Then Harry’s head jerked to the side; he felt as though someone had slapped him.  
  
Home…that didn’t necessarily mean just his own time. And it didn’t mean the Department of Mysteries, for sure, where Harry had always been uncomfortable even when he was there on official Auror business instead of being chased through the crazy corridors by Death Eaters.  
  
What if…  
  
Harry looked at the crumbling house and then around at the night, and his memories aligned with what he was seeing to tell him the truth. Yes, this was Godric’s Hollow, and this was the night his parents had been murdered.   
  
And in front of him was Snape right after his mother had been murdered, his mouth hanging open and his breath rattling in his lungs as if he was going to squeeze Harry in his arms and suck his breath like a vampire sucking blood.  
  
Harry moved a step back, not sure at all what was going to happen, not sure if this was what Snape had meant when he talked about dreams of Harry coming to him among the smoke and rubble of a distant place. Snape took the chance to wonder away from him, anyway, by aiming his wand at Harry again.  
  
“You’ve come to disturb Lily’s rest,” he whispered. “Haven’t you.  _Haven’t you_!”  
  
Harry didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know if he could even damage the timeline further at this point, if Snape was having dreams of him in this place, at this time. But on the other hand, if Snape was having dreams of him that he didn’t remember were real, then he probably hadn’t interacted with Harry in any prolonged way.  
  
Harry only backed a step away and shook his head in response to Snape’s question. His wand rose behind him, tracing a line that he hoped would give him some kind of plausible deniability in this situation. This particular spell was one he had never cast wordlessly, because he didn’t use it all that often, but his desperation drove his strength, and the white glow that was the answer to his plea rose around him.  
  
Snape stared and squinted, one hand going over his eyes. Harry knew that wasn’t because the light was so brilliant. Rather, it made the white glow shimmer and dance around him, and that meant it was ghostly, luminous.   
  
And since only ghosts shone like that, Harry hoped Snape would tend to the simpler explanation. Or at least think he was hallucinating, instead of thinking someone had really been there.  
  
“I came to honor her,” Harry whispered, and at his will, the glow slightly altered its direction and intensity. He heard Snape stop breathing altogether as it fully illuminated Harry’s face and his eyes. “Do you deny my connection to her?”  
  
“No,” Snape whispered back, on a long exhale.  
  
Harry nodded and moved past him, to stand for a moment in the center of the ground floor, where Snape had been moving. He looked up for a second to the bedroom where the confrontation had taken place, and then turned his back. No, he couldn’t go up there for any reason right now. Will had nothing to do with it. His legs simply locked.  
  
He wandered for a moment as Snape had done, and then bent down and pressed his hands against a piece of wall scorched by a missed spell. He kept his head bowed as he did so. This was…  
  
This was as much honoring of his parents as he could do right now. And although he thought their bodies had to have been taken away along with him, because he couldn’t hear the crying of a baby or see any sprawled legs or arms, he still couldn’t bear to go up to that bedroom.  
  
“Who are you?”  
  
That was Snape’s voice again, behind him. Harry stood up and turned around, and a truth rose to his lips that he knew would come out differently. But at the same time, it  _was_ the truth, the most profound truth that he was going to get out of this situation.   
  
“A lost soul.” His eyes held Snape’s, and Snape dropped his wand so that it rolled away into the rubble. “Just like you are, Severus Snape.”  
  
Snape stared dumbly at him. Harry shook his head, and raised his hands. He didn’t know what he would do with them, either, the way he hadn’t known the words that would come out, until the last moment. Then his hands came to rest on either side of Snape’s face.  
  
“Someone lost,” Harry whispered. “We’re both lost here.”  
  
He didn’t kiss Snape. It would have been unfair. But he had never been so tempted, even during the time he had spent with Severus in 1983. Snape’s eyes locked on him, and there was simple devastation in them. Something Harry could understand, something that Harry didn’t distrust or want to turn his back on because it would change the timeline. Sometimes some things had to happen, whether or not they affected history.  
  
Harry moved forwards, and enfolded Snape in his arms. Snape gave a confused, sobbing sound, and his arms moved so that his hands brushed Harry’s hips, in what Harry could have called an embrace if he was so moved.   
  
They stood like that for long enough that Harry felt Snape begin to stir. He would recover his wits in a few minutes, he would ask awkward questions, and they were questions that Harry had no answer for. He silently slid one hand down and into the pocket with the heartsblood stone, which he gripped again.  
  
This time, his whisper was different. “Take me to the time where I need to be.” That ought to be enough, specific enough, to take him back to the timeline he had emerged from, instead of a random timeline that the heartsblood gem had chosen.  
  
The gem sparked, and the same whirling sparks dissolved Harry as before. He caught one glimpse of Snape’s wide, dark eyes, seeking him out. Of course, Harry dissolving that way in what obviously  _wasn’t_ Apparating would certainly make his tale of being a ghost more conveniently true.  
  
It didn’t stop Harry from feeling as though he’d had a body-blow.  
  
*  
  
Harry opened his eyes, barely needing to move to know that he wasn’t in the Department of Mysteries this time, either. He turned his head back and forth, staring, trying to understand.   
  
He was in an earthen tunnel, with a slight gleam of light towards both ends. He tried to straighten up, and bumped his head. There was the smell of wood and wet soil. Roots dangled above him.  
  
He was in the tunnel leading up to the Shrieking Shack.  
  
Harry groaned softly, and pounded his scar with his palm for a few seconds. Why did this keep  _happening?_ Would he have to speak a whole sentence to the heartsblood jewel that it couldn’t possibly misinterpret?   
  
 _I’ll just have to hope that I’m not in the middle of a battle situation when I use it, this time,_ he thought, and his hand went back into his pocket to clutch the jewel, because there really was no time like the present.  
  
But someone groaned down at the end of the tunnel of light, as if in answer to him, and Harry knew when he had come, and why.  
  
He turned around and stared gloomily up the tunnel. Then he began to move forwards, ducking his head. He wondered for a second if his other self was there, and if he would run into him and change history.  
  
But he didn’t. Instead, the tunnel came out in a hole that was also smaller than Harry remembered it, and he was dragging himself up into the dusty Shrieking Shack. His foot slipped on the floor.  
  
Well, that would be on account of all the blood flowing from the ragged wound in Snape’s throat.  
  
Harry took a deep breath and knelt down. Well, fine. At least this time, he didn’t think he would really change history, if only because Snape would die and be unable to tell anyone what or who he’d seen. And Harry reached out and gently placed his hand on the slashes that Nagini’s fangs had caused, holding them closed as much as he could. He would conjure a glass of water for Snape, he thought, but he doubted the man would be able to drink it with that throat wound.  
  
Snape’s eyes opened. He had groaned sort of on instinct, Harry thought, but he was looking straight at Harry now, and another, more heartfelt moan came out of his mouth. Harry nodded, but didn’t know what to say.  _Sorry I showed up to torture you in your final moments as well? Hope you can forgive me for something that was almost twenty years in the past? Sorry we don’t have time for a last kiss?_  
  
Snape continued gazing at him. Then he reached up with a trembling, bloody hand.  
  
Harry held still, not sure whether Snape was going to slap him or hold him or what, but confident that whatever it was, he would deserve it.  
  
Snape’s hand settled on his cheek, and he feathered his fingers out, digging in with one nail and then another, shaking his head a little. He probably didn’t expect to find real skin, Harry thought, holding patiently still. Or maybe he was looking for evidence of reality. He must think he was dreaming now, hovering on the edge of passing out.  
  
“Real,” Snape breathed, and Harry knew his guess had been right.  
  
“Yes,” Harry said simply, and bent down. He did think that he would at least try to kiss Snape’s cheek, this time, and never mind that it was tacky with spilled blood. Snape deserved at least this much.  
  
 _If he’ll let me._  
  
Snape opened his mouth and parted his lips. Harry let his lips touch Snape’s, and his tongue touch his, too. Snape leaned his head back on the floor and closed his eyes. His face had no expression now.  
  
 _He must be on the verge of death,_ Harry thought. His wand hand twitched. He wanted to do what he could to repair those injuries, although he was no Healer, and he didn’t think he could do anything about the poison.  
  
But more to the point, Snape had  _died._ He knew that. Harry had no idea what damage it would wreak on the timeline if he lived, but he also knew it was probably going to be more than just keeping a stolen heartsblood jewel from the cross.   
  
Snape’s voice sighed out, and his hand fell to the floor. Harry’s heart seized up, and his fingers fumbled for his wand.  
  
He found the heartsblood jewel that he was holding instead, and his fingers leaped in shock when he felt a similar spark of magic from somewhere in the room.  
  
From Snape’s pocket. It was coming from his  _pocket._  
  
Harry reached out with a numb hand. He dipped it into Snape’s pocket, and out came another identical heartsblood jewel, other than the protective wrapping around it. That seemed like an ordinary silk handkerchief, although it had also been enchanted with a charm that would keep the jewel unbreakable.  
  
Harry stared. The spark of power between the jewels was unmistakable, and he had seen the cross not an hour ago—at least in his own, subjective timeline. He supposed, numbly, that it was almost fifteen years ago in real time.  
  
 _I don’t understand this._  
  
He shook his head roughly and plunged his hand back into his pocket. This time, he spoke the sentence in detail, as calmly and firmly as he could.  
  
“Take me to the evening of August 20th, 1983, in the Hogwarts quarters of Severus Snape, Potions professor, the one I left not that long ago.”  
  
This time, as the jewels sparked and whirled him around, Harry felt a cold, grim determination filling him. He was  _going_ to get his answers.  
  
He looked at Snape’s body lying on the floor in the moments before the sparks consumed him again.  
  
 _And some justice for him, if I can._  


	13. Leaping Through Time

Harry stepped out of the whirl of color and looked around. For a moment, he thought the jewel had failed to take him where it should have. Maybe the younger Snape didn’t have one of the jewels after all. This plain, empty room didn’t look like the ones in the dungeons were he had spent so much of his time.  
  
But then he realized that that was because all the candles were dimmed, and the flickering shadows and occasional bright spots had become thick, brooding dimness. There was no fire on the hearth at all. There was no blanket draped on the couch, as there had been when Harry was sleeping there. The door to the lab was shut.  
  
Harry looked around uncertainly. He hadn’t seen Snape’s actual bedroom. Would he be there? Or perhaps outside? The jewel might have brought him to the place but not the person.  
  
Then a wand touched the back of his neck. “You are to declare your name,” said Snape’s light, dry voice. “And I might not kill you if you’re good.”  
  
Harry swallowed, hoped that doing so wouldn’t look too cowardly, and said, “Harry Potter. I tried to go back to my own time, and instead I traveled to two different points in the past. Both were places I was with you, but I don’t—I don’t understand why the jewel would have taken me there instead of back to my own future in the Department of Mysteries.”  
  
Snape was silent for long moments. The wand at the back of his neck didn’t move, though. Then he said, “You will show me the jewel with the traveling enchantment.”  
  
Harry hated to do it, because he knew he might not get it back, but on the other hand, Snape was probably also angry enough to really curse him with that wand. He had to worry about being alive before he worried about getting back to his own time.  
  
 _If that’s even possible at this point, with all the ways that I must have changed the timeline,_ Harry thought wearily, and moved his hand into his pocket slowly and obviously, the way he had been trained to tell criminals he was holding at wandpoint to do it. He dug out the jewel and offered it backwards on his flat palm.  
  
He felt Snape’s wand press hard enough that it seemed as if he was leaning all his weight on it. Then he took the jewel and examined it. He must have turned it back and forth; Harry thought he could make out faint reflections playing off the walls. A second later, Snape muttered an irritated spell, and flames sprang back onto the candles and torches. Harry blinked in surprise, and tried not to twitch. That might  _also_ get him cursed.  
  
“It does seem to be one of the heartsblood jewels from the cross.” Snape’s voice was neutral in a way that told Harry how much it must have cost him to  _keep_ it neutral. “Where did you get it?”  
  
“Where do you  _think_  I got it?” Harry snapped, unable to ignore the provocation of a stupid question even though he also thought Snape probably had his reasons for asking it. “I pried it out of the cross before I destroyed it.”  
  
“And the cross is gone?” Snape was whispering to himself, as if he thought that Harry’s answers were less important than the jewel. Harry wanted to turn around and see Snape’s expression, and insist that  _he_ was more important than a bloody jewel.  
  
But doing that would only anger Snape further, so Harry instead stood there, and then went with it when Snape abruptly grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. Harry raised his hands and tried to look as innocent as he could.   
  
“You knew I had taken a heartsblood jewel,” said Snape. He took a step back and swept his head around as though he was checking for shadows behind Harry that might produce more things he considered impossible.  
  
 _He looks tired,_ Harry thought.  _Stressed._    
  
But since he had really been one of the factors to contribute to that, he knew better than to say anything about it. He nodded instead. “Because of one of the times I went back to.”  
  
Snape cocked his head. “ _Accio_ heartsblood jewel.”  
  
The one that he already held trembled. The jewel that had been hiding in Harry’s pocket, the one that he had found on the dying Snape’s body, leaped out of his pocket and flew over to Snape. He took it and stared at it. Then he looked around.  
  
Harry didn’t know what he was searching for until he spun to face Harry and growled, “Where is the one  _I_ took? What did you do to it?”  
  
Harry gaped at him. “How could I do anything when I didn’t even know you had it? Until I went to the future, I mean. I mean, your future. My past.”  
  
Snape exhaled hard. Then he turned and cast a spell Harry didn’t recognize on the heartsblood jewel that Harry had taken from his—his future self’s—dying body. The jewel trembled and vibrated for a moment, making an odd thrumming noise. Then it relaxed into stillness against Snape’s palm.  
  
Snape closed his eyes.  
  
“What did the spell tell you?” Harry asked, when he thought he had waited long enough for Snape to make up his damn mind.  
  
Snape spun around again, and this time, his wand ended up jammed right against Harry’s jugular. Harry arched his neck a little, tears of reaction starting from his eyes. But he fought them down, furiously, and stared at Snape, waiting.  
  
Snape shook his head and whispered, “Do you understand that I do not have the jewel  _I_ removed from the cross? And that the one you brought back with you is  _that same one_?” He moved a step closer, but at least he moved his wand up so it was more vertical instead of horizontal, and Harry could breathe. “Do you understand that that means the timeline  _can_ be changed? And things will still exist?”  
  
“The past can affect the future,” said Harry, and shifted uncomfortably as he tried to get back from the wand. Snape touched his shoulder, and that was enough to hold him still. He was still trying to watch the end of the wand and Snape’s eyes simultaneously, though. He told himself that wasn’t stupid, that was just good sense. “I already knew that, or they wouldn’t have sent me back to destroy the Horcrux. They hoped that destroying it in the past would remove the threat of Voldemort in the future.”  
  
Snape, watching him so steadily, seemed to have forgotten to flinch at the name. “And the future can affect the past,” he said.  
  
Harry closed his eyes. He had a headache. “They  _still_ should have sent someone else. I don’t know much about time travel.”  
  
“I am glad they didn’t,” Snape said, in a voice so low that Harry couldn’t really distinguish the emotion in it. “Because then otherwise, I would never have met you.”  
  
Harry blinked and looked at him again. Snape stood closer to him than Harry thought was really necessary, gaze locked on Harry’s face. Harry shifted. “Yeah,” he said, “but you know that this means—”  
  
“That what I envisioned cannot be?” Snape interrupted. “I know that. That vision vanished when you left.”  
  
Harry winced but didn’t make excuses. “I want to know what this means. I want to know how to help you. Come to terms with fate and the fact that I have to leave,” he added, while Snape was still opening his mouth.  
  
“You came to put the timeline back into place?” Snape’s voice quivered a little with laughter. “You thought bringing the heartsblood jewel back to the past would help resolve that?”  
  
“I didn’t expect it to make your jewel disappear.” Harry stared again at the sparkling one in Snape’s hand. He supposed logically, that more than two couldn’t exist since the cross had been destroyed, but on the other hand, he didn’t know that logic actually applied to time travel.  
  
“I did some more research after you left.” Snape’s voice sounded odd. Harry turned towards him and saw Snape’s eyes fastened on him expectantly, as though he thought Harry would lunge at him any second. “Things about time travel that might explain some of our experiences. Do you wish to see them? Or do you have to get back to your friends?”  
  
Harry was just opening his mouth to reply when he realized how mock-serious Snape was acting. He narrowed his eyes. “You don’t need to be a prick about it.”  
  
“On the contrary,” said Snape, “I think it wisest to protect myself, since even if I convince you of what I have discovered, I may not be able to prevent you from charging off to a future that you think exists without me.”  
  
Harry winced all over. “I’m sorry.”  
  
Snape listened for a moment, then nodded judiciously. “That was a fair beginning,” he said. “It didn’t have the word ‘but’ after it.”  
  
Harry clenched his teeth a little. Even when he was trying to listen honestly to Snape and do all he could to make up for some of the things that had happened between them, he felt judged and pushed aside.  
  
But the mess they had made, or he had made, wasn’t cleared up yet. “Do you think that the future is changed now, completely?” he asked. “If I were to go back now, I would find some other version of myself, or I would never have been born, or—”  
  
“Rather than asking wild questions and making equally wild speculations,” said Snape smoothly, “perhaps you should look at this tome I discovered. It clarified some things rather spectacularly for me.”  
  
He reached behind him and picked up a large red book that he held out to Harry with a slight, mocking bow. Harry glared at him a little, but Snape didn’t appear at all repentant, so Harry sighed and accepted the book.  
  
The pages were thick and creamy, strangely hard to turn, as if the parchment they were made of liked to stick together. Harry turned them over anyway, and made his way to the page that had a thick red bookmark stuck into it.   
  
The words on the top of the page, where the bookmark was magically placed to point, jumped out at him the minute he turned to it.   
  
 _The theorists of the nature of time once spoke of time as a stream, flowing only one direction, and liable to swallow any changes that tried to take place in it. Then, after the invention of Time-Turners, it was thought that the stream could be dammed and diverted, making it necessary to take extreme caution when traveling in time. But recently a new theory has emerged, after time-travelers claimed that they_ did  _make changes to the timeline, and that nothing bad resulted._  
  
 _This theory sees time as a great, organic beast, one that some have likened to a dragon or a tree. A tree can be cut down, but not with one blow, and this would be a tree enormously bigger and more impervious to even magical damage than any living tree could reasonably be said to be. A dragon will not notice the bite of a mosquito, even if one could pierce through its thick scales._  
  
Harry paused and glanced at Snape. “These are recent theories?” he ventured.  
  
Snape nodded. “Irma keeps more careful track of books on time travel than I had thought. It must be a pet project of hers. This one was published last year.”  
  
“But that still means 1982,” Harry pointed out, feeling a renewed surge of anxiety. “It means that by the time I come from, they could have changed their minds again and come up with another theory on the sensitive nature of time.”  
  
In silence, Snape held up the heartsblood jewel.  
  
“You don’t think that proves a lot by itself?” Harry raised his eyebrows at Snape. “The man I knew wouldn’t think that proves anything.”  
  
“Not by itself,” said Snape calmly, although Harry saw his jaw clench and felt a small surge of glee that he had succeeded in irritating him. “What  _proves_ something is that I had it here, and you found it in the future, and now it is here again.” He lowered his hand and stared at Harry. “The moment you came back in time to change the Horcrux, you changed things. I think your Unspeakable friends had to know this was going to happen. They would not have risked time travel in the first place if they could have accomplished the destruction of the Horcrux by other means.”  
  
Harry shrugged helplessly. “I suppose, if history always snapped back into place, then I couldn’t have traveled back in time. Because if I’d always come back in time and destroyed the cross, there would have been nothing for me to come back in time with.”  
  
“Exactly,” said Snape, and his eyes shone. “So time must be more like the last theory in the book I showed you.” He tapped the line in the book Harry still held, as if he might have missed it. “It must be like a dragon that cannot be annoyed by the bite of a mosquito. If you had read on, you would have seen the speculation by these theorists that time repairs wounds to itself by simply growing and healing around them. This must be one of the reasons that so few people can see time travelers. But the ones who can affect history, do so. What happens becomes what _happened_. In the case of objects, they may simply vanish. In the case of human memories, they may be modified.” He eyed Harry intently.  
  
“I can’t  _Obliviate_ you,” Harry said. “I know that. It’s hard to do that to a Legilimens in the first place, and I wasn’t ever good with Memory Charms. But I think something else must have happened. Perhaps you modified your own memories because you were so disgusted with yourself for giving into my charms.”  
  
Snape uttered a short laugh, presumably to show what he thought of Harry’s use of the word “charms.” “Or perhaps things have already changed, and what was once true is no longer true.”  
  
Harry shivered. “But what would that mean? That Voldemort could come back even though I destroyed all his Horcruxes?”  
  
“I do not think so,” said Snape, and turned his head to the side as if the answer was written on the wall there. Or on invisible pages in his mind, Harry thought, watching him. “It would take multiple journeys to the past to find the Horcruxes and remove them before you destroyed them, and most Death Eaters who managed such things—if they did—would probably prefer to spend time working to find the spirit of the Dark Lord himself, and making sure his return would succeed.” He turned to Harry with remote eyes. “But it does make me wonder if the Unspeakables know considerably more about time travel than they have told you, and spend part of their time guarding against such occurrences.”  
  
Harry snorted. “I doubt it, or they wouldn’t have let me come here and flail around like this.”  
  
Snape smiled coolly. “And what makes you think that you have not done exactly as you were meant to?”  
  
Harry blinked at him. “I mean—they didn’t explain much to me because they said that they didn’t  _know_ enough. They said—they said that I had to leave as soon as possible because there was the chance Voldemort would come back any time, or these new Death Eaters would try to murder someone and succeed, and—”  
  
“But if time can change, then you could have left even after that happened, come back in time, and destroyed the Horcrux,” said Snape softly, his eyes fixed on Harry. “And it all would have changed.”  
  
Harry curled his fingers. “What does that  _mean_? Does it mean that if you came back into the future with me, you would be alive?”  
  
Snape’s eyes widened. Harry winced as he realized what he’d said. “I didn’t mean—I mean— _damn_ it.”  
  
He did reach for his wand after all, only to find that it wasn’t next to his hand. He looked over, and found Snape spinning it between his fingers, his gaze soft and pensive on Harry’s face.  
  
“You appear…somewhat excitable,” Snape said. “Even if you recognize the difficulties of attempting to  _Obliviate_ an Occlumens, I thought you might try, in your desperation to save your friends and your home.” Once again, he tilted his head at the heartsblood jewel he held. “Never mind that you would have to take this back into the future and deposit it where you found it to really make the timeline suffer no change. Beside my dying body, I assume?”  
  
His voice trembled a little. Harry covered his eyes and muttered, “I’m sorry.”  
  
“You say that often,” said Snape, and his voice sharpened. “I would prefer a different outcome. One that would preserve the timeline that you wish for, and one that would give me the result  _I_ wish for.”  
  
Harry snorted and dropped his hands. “What would that be? Where I fall in love with you? I just—I haven’t felt love for you. I’m sorry.”  
  
Snape gestured negligently with Harry’s own wand, and Harry found his lips sealed shut. He pulled irritably at them, and Snape gave him a nasty smile and shook his head.  
  
“I told you I was tired of hearing those words,” he said. “Now. There should be a way to do what must be necessary to preserve your existence and mine, or the existence of the man who died in the Shack, and to gratify my desire.”  
  
Harry made a grab for his wand. Snape let him take it, with a droll look that Harry could have lived without. Harry unsealed his lips and demanded, “Why does there have to be? We don’t always get what we want.”  
  
“How true,” said Snape, taking a long, gliding step towards him. “And do you want me?”  
  
Harry glared at him. Snape simply looked back at him, unaffected. He wasn’t the overexcited man Harry had first met, now that he was freed from the influence of Slytherin’s bowl, and yet he wasn’t the grumpy man who had died unfairly in the Shrieking Shack, either. Harry wondered whether  _either_ of them really knew who Snape was right now.  
  
“I don’t know,” he said.  
  
Snape paused with his eyes once again fastened on the wall as if he was reading invisible instructions there. Despite the ridiculousness of it, Harry ended up turning to look, because Snape’s attention was so compelling. There was nothing written there, of course.  
  
Snape’s hand came to rest on his shoulder, and he bent down to whisper into Harry’s ear. “You should think more deeply about your own desires. I know what I want. I want the chance to see what will happen between us without the bowl, and without your own stubborn conviction that it lies with you to stabilize time.”  
  
“Since I was the one who messed it up in the first place, I should,” Harry countered tensely.  
  
“No,” said Snape, and he sounded supremely smug. “You were yet another tiny parasite on the body of the dragon, and you may have corrected some other mistake, some worse one, that we were unaware of. In fact, is that not what you came here to do? To destroy the Horcrux that had escaped the destruction of the others?”  
  
Harry grunted and tried to turn his head. Snape held him still with the hand on his shoulder, and then made him freeze completely by bending down and pressing his lips into the skin behind Harry’s ear. Harry heard himself make a startled sound.  
  
“Yes, I thought that would hold you,” Snape murmured. “Now. Listen. There is a spell that I know has sometimes been performed in cases where someone had to flee the country or developed a disease that they wanted to keep secret.”  
  
“Neither of those  _really applies in this case_ ,” Harry hissed.  
  
“It comes close enough,” said Snape, sounding unruffled. “And before you can ask, yes, the magic is Dark. It takes so much magic from the intended caster that he tends to be weak for years afterwards. But the main magic is a prohibition.”  
  
Harry blinked, his mind abruptly cast back into Auror training. “That sounds more like a ritual than a spell.”  
  
“It is both.”  
  
“You didn’t say—”  
  
“Nor did I say it was not.”  
  
Harry sighed in exhaustion and gave up on that part of the conversation. “Fine. What’s the prohibition?”  
  
“The caster may never come back to the place he left.”  
  
Harry turned around despite the pressure of the hand that was trying to hold him in place. “And what good is  _that_ going to do? You know as well as I do that you have to stay here, to hold the timeline in place!”  
  
Snape smiled coldly. “So I would have to, except that the spell will create another copy of me, and leave him in my place.”  
  
Harry stared at him, then opened his mouth, then closed it. Snape nodded slowly. “Good. I can see that you are thinking. That is an improvement over the last several things you might have done.”  
  
Harry ignored that for long moments. He  _was_ thinking, although he didn’t know whether what he had to say would make any sense to Snape. He said it anyway. “Does that mean the Snape I knew in my timeline wasn’t the real one?”  
  
Snape turned his head a little to the side. “He was as real as I am. He was me, if I was left to develop through time normally.” He paused, seeming to understand that Harry wasn’t satisfied, and added soothingly, “He was me, until you came back.”  
  
“I don’t understand.”  
  
“I am not sure that anyone who is not an Unspeakable does.” Snape eyed him measuringly. “Now. Will you help me in this? Or will you insist that I remain behind, and perhaps change things even further now that I know my death is coming and that you never wanted to return?”  
  
Harry shook his head. “I did think the best thing was to stay away and for me to go back to my own time. But I wanted to make sure no damage resulted to you more than I wanted to stay away.”  
  
Snape paused as though that was a momentous revelation. Harry, watching him, realized abruptly that maybe it  _was_ , for him. Harry was in his own head, of course, thinking his own thoughts, and so to him it wasn’t any big deal, but it really might be to Snape.  
  
“Well,” said Snape, and his voice was soft. “This does change things.”


	14. Working Out the Ritual

“I do not think we will be able to do it on our own.” That was Snape’s disgruntled voice, and Harry tensed automatically before he remembered that he wasn’t about to be punished for doing a potion wrong. Harry shook his head and reached up to pinch his glasses off and rub his forehead. He was seriously being hampered by reacting to everything like a Hogwarts schoolboy. He hoped he’d be able to get rid of those reactions soon.  
  
“But who else can we tell? That would change the timeline further. And maybe defeat the whole point of this ritual in the first place,” Harry had to add. He could think of some people who would want to prevent Snape from ever finding happiness in the first place.  
  
“We can tell Albus. He is appropriately ruthless with even his own memories. If he wished to shed them, or if I asked him to shed them and he agreed that it was necessary for my happiness, then he would.”  
  
Harry blinked at Snape a little. “Earlier you seemed puzzled when I suggested that you were that close.”  
  
“We had some….discussions while you were gone.” Snape’s lip peeled back, and his eyes blazed. “Certain things that he thought I should have seen long since came clear to me. And I intend to take every advantage of them.”  
  
Harry lowered his head and watched Snape for a moment from beneath his eyelashes while Snape stared into the cauldron he’d been attempting to use to brew this potion the ritual needed. Snape, being Snape, turned around and caught him at it soon enough. “What?” he added.  
  
Harry looked away and swallowed. “I suppose I just—don’t understand how we’re going to do this and still leave a copy of you behind. He’ll have all the same memories, won’t he? He could change the timeline after we’re gone by trying to follow us, or treating the younger version of me differently, or something else.”  
  
“The ritual leaves only certain memories in the copy’s head,” said Snape, speaking in a tone that suggested he was talking to an idiot. “Otherwise, it would not be useful to those who have to flee the country after the commission of a crime. If the copy could go and talk to the Aurors, who would use it?”  
  
Harry flinched a little. “And that’s what makes me certain that we’re going to have a future for you, but not a future for us,” he muttered.  
  
He hadn’t intended Snape to hear that, of course. But Snape had sharp ears. He turned towards Harry and seemed to settle, in a way that meant he was probably about to take a fighting stance. “Explain what you mean by that.”  
  
Harry sighed. That sigh wasn’t enough to put Snape off, from the way he kept staring, although Harry felt as if it should have. Surely it showed him Harry was like a little kid in some ways still and not worthy of him?  
  
But it apparently didn’t, so Harry had to explain. “I like that you’ll have a better chance in the future. A chance to be happy. But you still treat me like I’m an idiot half the time, and I’ve  _had_ it with being treated like that in the future. I can’t stay with someone who thinks I’m stupid.”  
  
Snape was utterly still for a few moments, eyes scanning over him. Then he nodded, and put down the cauldron with a clang on the floor in front of him.  
  
Harry held his breath, not sure whether he wanted Snape to declare that he would stay here and not use the ritual, or come to the future with Harry and simply never bother to associate with him again. Either way, it would solve some problems that were beginning to matter more to Harry the more he thought about them.  
  
How were they ever going to  _adapt_ to each other? They might have some people who were happy for them, but not very many. And for all the point that they would be near the same age, Snape could still find people more like him, more mature than Harry, to share his life. That might be the best thing for him, in fact.  
  
It just seemed more and more unlikely the more Harry contemplated it.  
  
Snape stalked towards him and reached out to take his face. Harry met his eyes. Now that he could admit there was a possibility he might stay with Snape and not have to leave him behind, he could admit how attractive it was—that intensity, that passion.   
  
Not least because this time, he knew it was real, even if it was angry and not sexual.  
  
“Explain why people have treated you like an idiot in the future,” Snape whispered.  
  
Harry raised his eyebrows. “They didn’t think I knew what I wanted, or who I really was,” he said, and elaborated when Snape gave him a calm, inquiring look. “They thought I was a crazy, attention-seeking idiot for a while. The Heir of Slytherin for a while. The perfect Savior, and then I didn’t act like it.” He scratched the back of his neck. “It’s calmed down since the end of the war, but it does seem as though that’s only because I’m doing what they wanted.”  
  
“What was that?” Snape reached up and rubbed the back of his neck as though he assumed it would be dry and painful where Harry had scratched it.  
  
“Oh, become an Auror and go on saving the world.” Harry shrugged and leaned back into the touch. When Snape wasn’t being an arsehole, he  _could_ be someone whose hands were soothing. Harry sighed and let his eyes drift shut. “I don’t know what they’re going to think when I show up with you.”  
  
“ _I_ cannot wait to find out.”  
  
Harry cracked an eye and looked at him skeptically. “Despite how much it’ll irritate you to be asked questions constantly?”  
  
“You seem to think that I am the man who you watched die, not the man I am now,” said Snape, his voice a shade cooler. “I do not mind being asked questions in the service of a good cause, such as by students who are trying to  _honestly_ garner more information about Potions, and not simply get out of doing work. Or being asked what right I have to claim a famous man as my lover.” His hand tightened on the back of Harry’s neck.  
  
“You’re right,” Harry said a minute later. “Sorry.” It was true that the man he still pictured Snape as being would have resented the questions, but that man would also never have become his lover in the first place.  
  
Snape nodded once, in sober approval, and then asked, “And now you approve of involving Albus in our ritual?”  
  
“I think we do have to,” Harry said. “I don’t particularly want to involve him, but I do want you to come forwards.”  
  
From the way Snape slowly inclined his head, Harry realized that was one of the absolutely best things he could have said. He smiled back, feeling a little more confident.  _Sometimes, I’m not horrible at this trying to make Snape feel better thing._  
  
*  
  
“Yes, the ritual is a tricky one,” Dumbledore said, humming under his breath as he moved his fingers through the pages of the book that Snape had been using. Harry sat and watched him, wondering why his breath didn’t catch more painfully in his chest. Maybe he still resented Dumbledore for some of what he’d done.  
  
Or maybe it was because Dumbledore had agreed at once to separate some of his own memories into a Pensieve never to be touched and never asked anything about his own future. He didn’t seem curious about it.   
  
 _To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure._ Harry was looking at a man who  _believed_ that, he thought.  
  
“Ah, yes, I believe I see part of your problem.” Dumbledore adjusted the glasses on his nose and peered more closely at the book. “This says that you must decide on a destination beforehand, and it must be a destination that the person is intimately familiar with.”  
  
“Professor Snape just knowing the Department of Mysteries wouldn’t be enough?” Harry asked, with a sinking stomach.  
  
“I thought you called him Severus, my boy,” Dumbledore said, without looking up from the book.  
  
Harry ducked his head under a lash-like glance from Snape. He knew this wasn’t about playing their parts in a deception anymore, either. “Sorry,” he murmured. “Could Severus visit the Department of Mysteries?”  
  
“Not in this time, no.” Dumbledore folded his hands on top of the book and smiled blandly at them both. “Because that would not be his destination, would it?”  
  
Harry had to shake his head. No, the ordinary Department of Mysteries was far enough away from the one Harry had left that thinking about it in terms of distance didn’t even make much sense. How did “when” correspond to “where”?  
  
“So we must make one journey to the future?” Snape—Severus, Harry supposed he should call him—shook his head hard enough that Harry thought he could hear his brains sloshing back and forth. “Impossible. That would mean the copy would remember the future, and the ritual. And he would perhaps contrive to follow us.”  
  
“Not if he was  _Obliviated_ ,” Dumbledore said gently. “And I volunteer myself for that task. As an experienced Legilimens, I can be sure that I will not damage his mind.”  
  
Snape turned and looked at Harry in silence. Harry looked back, blinking. He had thought  _Severus_  knew that he’d accepted this. Then he realized what Severus was waiting for, and blushed as he put his hand into his robe pocket and pulled out the heartsblood jewel that could bear them to the Department of Mysteries.  
  
“May I see that?” Harry handed it across the desk to Dumbledore, ignoring the way Severus tensed up. “Ah.” Dumbledore turned it back and forth enough to make the ruby-like facets sparkle, and then chuckled and gave it back. Severus only seemed to breathe again when it rested in Harry’s palm. “A clever enchantment. And capable of doing what we need it to do.” Dumbledore beamed at them. “Did you know that it is enspelled to allow  _several_ trips back and forth, rather than only a certain number of trips to a designated point? Or in a designated direction?”  
  
Harry grasped it faster than Severus, at least from the way Severus blinked, which surprised Harry. Then again, he knew more about what the situation looked like in the future.  
  
“Bloody Unspeakables,” he muttered. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they  _knew_ this had to happen, or something.”  
  
Dumbledore nodded happily. “Part of the timestream healing itself, or flowing in the same direction—whichever metaphor you prefer.” He sat back and stroked his beard. “You might as well leave from this very office and come back to the same destination. That way, you can be sure no one else will see you and question what you’re doing.”  
  
Harry swallowed and extended his hand to Severus. Severus came forwards to clasp it, now watching Harry as if he was the one who might prove untrustworthy if he had the heartsblood jewel. Harry shook his head to stop himself from wondering what Severus wanted, and waited until the man’s strong fingers had closed around his wrist.  
  
The touch unexpectedly made his heart beat a little faster. Harry blinked.  _Huh. Maybe this can work out in the future, after all._  
  
Severus seemed to know what he was thinking. There was a faint smile on his face as he nodded to Harry, and Harry tightened both his hold on Severus’s hand and his hold on the jewel as he spoke the sentence he had already prepared.  
  
“I wish to return to the Department of Mysteries on the day that I originally came from, in the timestream I originally came from, and taking the man and the individual objects I am touching with me.”  
  
Severus opened his mouth to ask a question, but didn’t get the chance to, before the world dissolved around them into the familiar ruby-colored sparks.  
  
*  
  
Of course, because of the way Harry’s life worked, he simply asked it once they leaped back into the Department of Mysteries.  
  
“—why did you ask about individual objects?”  
  
“Because I didn’t want to bring the floor I was standing on with me, while I  _did_ want to show up with the jewel and my robes and wand,” Harry muttered back, and turned around to face the first of the Unspeakables running towards him. He was glad that they wore their heavy grey hoods all the time. That meant there was less chance they would have to take the memory of faces away from the copy of Severus that the ritual would create.  
  
“We expected you to return,” said the lead Unspeakable simply, after coming to a stop in front of Harry. He looked as if he hadn’t been running just a moment before. He put his hands together in his sleeves and bowed deeply to Severus. “And Severus Snape. Welcome again.”  
  
Severus said nothing, but his eyes were sharp and alive. Harry decided it was his turn to glare at the Unspeakable and voice something. “So you knew this would happen? You knew when you sent me back in time that it would end up with me making a huge ring somehow?”  
  
“A ring is a simplified way to describe what has been happening,” began the lead Unspeakable.  
  
“And you shouldn’t give me too many details anyway,” Harry interrupted. “Fine. I just want to know one thing. Did you know the cross you gave me was a Horcrux before you sent me back in time?”  
  
“The possibility was theoretical, and hotly-debated.” For a moment, the Unspeakable bowed his head. “We had the cross in many pieces, because with its heartsblood jewels in place, it formed an artifact of incredible power, more than we were comfortable housing in this Department. Once it came back together, then it reassumed its Horcrux nature.”  
  
Harry closed his eyes, his head whirling.  
  
“You see now the wisdom in keeping silent,” Severus murmured. “I do not bewilder myself with facts that would only confuse me, and I may receive answers that are less than useless.”  
  
“You’re annoying, too, sometimes,” Harry muttered. “And don’t tell me that you didn’t understand that.”  
  
“You could if you wished to.” Severus’s voice was suddenly harsh. “You are not stupid. That is a pose you retreat to when you don’t wish to expend much effort.”  
  
Harry opened his mouth, but the Unspeakable interrupted. “There are many reasons that this ring exists, but one of the reasons is that it has  _always_ existed.” He nodded to Severus. “We have Seers who can practice the craft of Divination more reliably than the frauds you are familiar with. They saw you in the future, and were puzzled as to how Severus Snape could be there when he was dead. But this is one way.”  
  
“ _One_ way?” Severus tilted his head like a curious dog.  
  
“Of course,” said the Unspeakable. “It might also have been that you were a ghost, that you had faked your own death, that Harry Potter had resurrected you—”  
  
“Why would he have the power to do that?”  
  
Harry interrupted again. Yes, he would have to have a conversation with Severus about the Hallows and being the Master of Death, but he would prefer that it be after they had both become part of the future timeline again, in the way they were supposed to be. “So you knew this had to happen?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“But where did the timeline ring, or loop, or whatever it is,  _begin_?” Harry had heard Hermione talking about time loops, but to be frank, that was one of the things she had been trying to drill into his head while he was frantically preparing for a journey back in time, and he hadn’t listened.  
  
“It has no beginning.”  
  
Harry gave up again. Severus chuckled heartlessly, but squeezed Harry’s wrist in a way that said he hadn’t forgotten about the resurrection line.  
  
For the moment, Harry was busy thinking of other things. “So, do we need to take a tour of the Department?” He glanced at Severus. “You were the one who read up on the requirements of the spell. How long do you need to stay here?”  
  
“Albus was the one who found that part in the book,” Severus corrected him. He sounded as though he was on the verge of laughter. “I might as well remain here for a few hours that won’t mean anything in the face of flowing time, and learn more about you.” He turned to the Unspeakables again. “What accomplishment would you say that Harry Potter is most known for?”  
  
“This only makes more knowledge that Dumbledore needs to  _Obliviate_!” Harry hissed in warning.  
  
Severus paused once, then shook his head. “One gets rid of all the knowledge contained in a single experience, if one is careful with the Memory Charm,” he said. “All the events of this experience will go with the  _Obliviate_ , no matter how many there are.”  
  
“I’ll have to accept your word for that,” Harry said. His only real experience with Memory Charms was with Lockhart’s. He turned back to the Unspeakable. “So we can go back to the past now?”  
  
“There is no reason why not,” the lead Unspeakable said, after appearing to consider a moment. The other Unspeakables weren’t much help, Harry thought, standing around and whispering excitedly, but not approaching them. “There is no reason that you need to remain longer than you’re comfortable with.”  
  
“But I am exceedingly comfortable where I am,” Severus murmured. “Tell me. Is Potter that well-known for killing the Dark Lord?”  
  
“He is also an Auror,” said the Unspeakable, in a sort of confused voice. Harry couldn’t blame him. He must think that someone from the past would probably have more important things to find out, especially if they intended to emigrate to the future.  
  
“I meant more than that,” said Severus, and laughed a little. “If I am to appear out of nowhere, it would seem strange if I didn’t have the sort of knowledge that most of the people around me are assumed to have.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes at him and made a grab at his arm. “We aren’t going to pretend that you’re from this time period. How can we? Unless you want to lie about who you are.” He paused, thinking of something else, and turned to the Unspeakable. “Is it possible that the Ministry would try to arrest him for some of the things that he did in the past?”  
  
The Unspeakable laughed gently. “There haven’t been many precedents for situations like this, but enough. The Ministry would probably concede that, having paid with death, he cannot reasonably be expected to pay with anything else.” He glanced back and forth between Harry and Severus. “I do hope that you’ll tell me how you achieved this, someday, as well as the reasoning behind your questions.”  
  
“Later,” said Harry firmly, and reached out and gripped the heartsblood jewel again. “Take us back to Dumbledore’s office in the time and place we just left.”  
  
Again the world around them dissolved, but not before Severus looked at the Unspeakables around them and smiled.   
  
Harry was a little worried to try and find out what that smile meant.  
  
*  
  
“Ah, boys,” said Dumbledore, although Harry wasn’t sure how he knew they had “gone” at all, since from his perspective they had probably only appeared to bounce a little. “A successful journey?”  
  
“Obviously, since we came back.” Severus turned at once to Harry. “Why are you so shy of having others tell me about you?”  
  
“Because I don’t like the gushing,” Harry answered, and turned to Dumbledore. “Is there a way to make sure that the ritual doesn’t go wrong in the middle of it? Any preparations we can take that we haven’t already taken?”  
  
“You forget that I don’t know what you’ve already done, my boy,” Dumbledore chided him gently, and Harry flushed, because it  _was_ stupid to forget like that. “But I assume Severus will have no trouble brewing the potion. He must also make the golem that will become the copy’s body himself. However, you might help him cast the spells and create the final burst of magic that will bring the golem to life.”  
  
Harry nodded in silence and glanced over at Severus. Severus had simply watched him steadily all through Dumbledore’s speech, as if he hadn’t heard it. Well, perhaps there was nothing in it that was new to him. After all, he had known about this ritual and spell long before Harry had, or he wouldn’t have been able to suggest it.  
  
“Thanks, Headmaster,” Harry said, and took the book back. “Nothing else that we need to do before we begin the rest of the ritual?”  
  
“No, nothing,” Dumbledore said, and leaned back with a small smile at them. “Don’t look so worried, Harry. I am sure this will be successful.”  
  
 _At least this plan doesn’t depend on hunting Horcruxes or some bizarre last-minute taking of memories from Snape,_ Harry thought, nodding to the Headmaster, and they departed his office.  
  
Severus spoke up when they were at the bottom of the moving spiral staircase, as if he thought Dumbledore would hear should he say something closer to the actual office. “What do you mean by ‘gushing’?”  
  
“The wizarding world doesn’t have enough celebrities,” Harry said. “So they take way too much interest in what I eat for breakfast and what I’ve done since defeating Voldemort and in my sex life and all the rest of it.” He turned and glanced up at Severus. “That’s one thing you’ll have to get used to if you stay with me after we go back to my time. The press is going to pounce on you if you say we’re lovers.”  
  
Severus had been looking thoughtful, but at the last words, his gaze swung around and locked on Harry again. “You say that as if there were going to be an  _if_.”  
  
Harry shrugged as he stepped off the bottom of the staircase. “I’m warning you. A fair warning.”  
  
“If you cared that much about what the press says and how I might react to it,” Severus breathed, putting a hand on his arm, “you would have let the Unspeakables tell me the truth when I asked for it.”  
  
Harry halted and looked at him. At least, with this, unlike with the ritual and the time travel that Severus knew so much more about than he did, he was on firm ground.  
  
“It’s embarrassing,” he told Severus. “No matter what it might be like  _now_ , I wanted to be a normal kid when I was younger. I was unusual because unusual things happened around me and I didn’t know it was magic, and then I was unusual because I had that stupid Boy-Who-Lived title. The people who can’t let it go and keep assigning me other stupid titles are the least important people in my life. If you pay too much attention to them, then you aren’t going to get to know the  _real_ me.”  
  
Severus looked at him with that blank expression Harry hated, because it hid what he thought so effectively. Then he reached out and put the gentlest of hands on Harry’s cheek.  
  
“I want to know all about you,” Severus said. “All sides. But if you want me to pay attention more to what you say than what they do, you only need give me something to listen to.”  
  
Harry nodded. There was a lump in his throat, which was stupid, because the words were simple and just  _decent,_ what an ordinary human being should do, right? Not something that was a big heroic sacrifice the way his friends would have made for him.  
  
Then he figured it out. Sometimes he was as slow as the Snape he had known thought he was.  
  
 _Normal. That’s what I wanted, someone who would treat me normally._  
  
And even if Severus’s gaze had gone searching again as he brushed past Harry and down towards the dungeons, it was all right, because he didn’t know what that gesture meant to Harry. But Harry had plenty of time to explain.


	15. Moral Decisions and Charred Stones

“Come in, my boy,” said Dumbledore’s voice an instant before Harry could knock on the door of his office.  
  
Harry rolled his eyes, but he was smiling by the time he urged the door open and stepped into that confined, gleaming room filled with glistening silver instruments. Dumbledore listened to portraits and so on all over Hogwarts. It wasn’t a surprise that he could seem all-knowing.  
  
Dumbledore had a long robe on it that depicted sleeping dragons, red on gold, and a droopy hat on his head topped by a puffball. He also had a thick book on his lap that was bound with leather and silver clasps and looked impressively dangerous. He put a finger on the page and smiled at Harry. Harry could swear that he saw a pair of tiny jaws reach out of the surface of the page, only to be absently swatted back by Dumbledore.  
  
“What is it?” Dumbledore asked gently. “Last-minute regrets?”  
  
“I thought of something, and I couldn’t sleep.” Harry sat down in front of the desk and silently accepted the steaming mug Dumbledore passed him, although he didn’t know what was in it until he sipped. Hot chocolate, with an aftertaste of something Dumbledore probably wouldn’t have given him when Harry was a student here.  
  
“About the ritual? I am afraid I have given you all the help I can.” Dumbledore looked at him thoughtfully this time, and shut the book with a swipe of his wand. “If you wish me to look it over again before you perform it, however, I will.”  
  
Harry snorted. “Not the ritual. I leave understanding it up to Severus. I could never grasp half of what he was babbling on about.” He stuck his hands beneath his chin and stared into the fire. “But I have to admit, it—it’s not right to leave the other version of him stuck here with all those sad memories to grow bitter about.”  
  
“Even if that is what has to happen for him to become the man he was in your time?”  
  
Harry sighed and looked up. “I don’t know. I got the impression he had plenty of bitterness because of what happened to him when he was at Hogwarts and in the first war. I never meant to add to it, you know.”  
  
“Indeed, you did not mean to, even if you did.” Dumbledore’s hand pulled at his beard. “Is there any solution to this dilemma?”  
  
Harry hesitated. “You said you could remove the memories that the copy would have of visiting the Department of Mysteries in my time.”  
  
Dumbledore nodded, eyes never moving from Harry’s face.  
  
“What about—removing the memories of me as well?” Harry asked. “Wouldn’t that be a good thing? It would mean he didn’t have to mourn me leaving and going away with a version of him, and he wouldn’t be as bitter about it as he would otherwise be.”  
  
Dumbledore tapped his fingers on the desk. “I could do as you ask. But you must consider, my boy, whether that would be beneficial. Do you know whether the copy of Severus would rather keep those memories, or discard them?”  
  
“We’re already getting rid of some others,” Harry said, and despite himself his shoulders tightened and his voice turned cold. “To protect the timeline, and to make sure that the—new version of Severus doesn’t know where Severus went and why. If he knew, he would probably attempt to follow us, wouldn’t he?”  
  
Dumbledore nodded silently again.  
  
“No,” said Harry, and shook his head. “I don’t want that to happen. I don’t want—” He clenched his hands silently. “How can I just let it happen?” he asked Dumbledore. “The deaths that the war caused? The way he suffered in the years after this? How can I just stand back and know that it’s going to happen to  _someone,_ even if that someone isn’t the person who’s going to come back to my own time with me?”  
  
Dumbledore watched him calmly for a long, long moment. Then he said, “Do you think you could keep all of this from happening if you simply time-traveled long enough?”  
  
“Yes,” Harry said instantly. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? He knew where most of the Horcruxes would be even in this timeline, except for Nagini, which hadn’t been made yet. Why hadn’t he gone and destroyed them? Prevented the whole war from happening in the first place?  
  
Then he paused. How was he planning to get the Horcrux out of the younger version of himself? It had only been Voldemort’s Killing Curse that had had the power to kill that soul shard, he was pretty sure. Otherwise, Dumbledore would probably have tried a less dangerous method first.  
  
Or Dumbledore hadn’t really known and had made a gamble in desperation. Harry wasn’t sure that he could make the same gamble even now, let alone do it and then go back to his timeline. It wouldn’t be his timeline anymore, if he tried such a drastic change. The people wouldn’t be the ones he knew anymore.  
  
“You see,” said Dumbledore, his voice so gentle that Harry started. Dumbledore reached out and casually took his hand, squeezing it once before he let it go. “You see what dangerous decisions must come from a position of power.”  
  
“And why people haven’t used time travel to change history already?” Harry asked. His throat hurt. He reached out blindly, and gratefully took the cup of hot chocolate up again. “I mean, I thought it was only because time travel devices were rare and hard to get.”  
  
“No.” Dumbledore’s eyes were kind. “There are still enough people who have had access to them that we would expect constant journeys through time, constant changes. We would never have an accurate history book.” He chuckled. “I can see upsides to that, mind you. Perhaps it would persuade historians to write more interestingly, or stand the chance of seeing their books outcompeted.”  
  
Harry shook his head. “But it’s not that?”  
  
“No.” The chuckle was gone from Dumbledore’s voice as though it had never been. He locked his gaze with Harry’s and spoke slowly and emphatically. “The theories about time healing injuries to itself are right. Things would still happen in the same large configuration—or you would go back to a change that would have altered memories, as well, so that you would be left as the only one who remembered what things had originally been like. Can you say that the changes you would make would be the right ones?”  
  
“More people would survive,” Harry argued instantly. He was better about it when he had someone to oppose him, he thought. “That has to be good.”  
  
“Indeed. What about the people killed in the war with Lucius Malfoy?”  
  
“ _What_ war with Lucius Malfoy?” Harry blinked at Dumbledore, wondering if he should even have started this train of thought. Dumbledore seemed to have decided to suddenly talk in riddles.  
  
“I mean,” said Dumbledore, “that one of the reasons no Death Eater tried to step up and take Voldemort’s place is that the Dark Marks on their arms did not fade. What would happen if they did? You could return to your time to find that another war had swept through and reduced many of those lives that might have escaped to rubble. Or some of the ones that still exist.”  
  
Harry hesitated. “You can’t know that. I mean, you can’t know that my timeline would be unhappier without the war.”  
  
“Neither can you know whether it would be happier.” Dumbledore turned his hands over. “And keep in mind that many of the people in the world cannot change history—the reason you were able to pass unnoticed by so many. I assume that many of those people are your friends?”  
  
“Yes,” Harry muttered.  
  
“But some of them would have the power to change history. I assume you have those among your friends as well, or at least your allies.” Dumbledore gave him a deep glance that Harry didn’t have any trouble understanding the meaning of. Dumbledore at least had to suspect that Harry and Severus hadn’t been on such good terms in the past—well, Harry’s past. “And among your enemies?”   
  
Harry ran a hand over his forehead. “I want to make sure no one suffers,” he said. “That was the only thing I was trying to do.”  
  
“And I honor you for trying.” Dumbledore sat back in his seat and swept a negligent arm along his desk, as if inviting Harry to look at all the silver instruments and thick books and the rest of the paraphernalia of the Headmaster’s job. “However, it is impossible. You are thinking of Severus’s suffering, and not others’. Perhaps not even your own. You can only  _guarantee_ it on an individual level, though. You can’t know, not for sure, that your decision to spare one person suffering won’t result in it for someone else.”  
  
Harry eyed Dumbledore. “That explains a lot about some of the actions you did, sir.”  
  
“Does it?” Dumbledore smiled back at him. “Well, I am always happy to increase the amount of understanding in the world.”  
  
Harry scowled back, a bit, but Dumbledore remained blandly smiling no matter what happened, so Harry finally rolled his eyes and settled for, “You can take his memories of me out, then? I mean, I suppose that the amount of bitterness he has towards me might not change the timeline significantly, but it matters to  _me_.”  
  
“Then you are more concerned about your own well-being than his?”  
  
“No!” Harry sat up, scowling. “I  _do_ want to spare him some suffering! I just don’t understand how having him hate me because of this,  _as well_ , will actually do anyone any good!”  
  
Dumbledore raised a hand. “I believe you, Harry. I was only checking to see what you would say.”  
  
“Then I want to spare him some,” Harry said, holding back the complaint about how Dumbledore was always testing him. He was asking Dumbledore to help him, after all. “I can’t be sure about doing anyone else any good, but this time, I can.”  
  
“I will do it.” Dumbledore gave him a sad smile. “And I can come up with an excuse for the amount of time that he will appear to be missing, as well.”  
  
Harry hesitated. “Is he going to blame you for that?”  
  
“Oh, yes,” said Dumbledore. “But I have done some things that Severus has the right to blame me for, and as for the rest—I have broad shoulders.” He stood and held out his hand to Harry. “It was nice to meet you, my boy. I hope the Severus that currently exists is happy in your timeline. I will do my best to care for the new one.”  
  
Harry hesitated one more time, then said, “Thank you, sir. For everything.”  
  
From the smile Dumbledore gave him, he knew Harry was thanking him for something more than was immediately obvious. But he only nodded, and watched benevolently as Harry left the office.  
  
*  
  
“You cannot interfere in the ritual,” Severus told Dumbledore, not looking up from the cauldron bubbling in front of him, which Harry assumed had something to do with the necessary potion. He hadn’t tried to follow Severus’s instructions about the brewing. Severus did it all himself anyway, and Harry didn’t see the point of purely theoretical knowledge. “You can only do whatever you must to comfort the copy afterwards.”  
  
“Of course.” Dumbledore stood off to the side, out of way of the spiraling pattern of red and black stones that Severus had placed on the floor of his quarters. Severus cast him a suspicious glance, but Dumbledore only smiled at him.  
  
They had a silent staring contest that made Dumbledore’s eyes twinkle. Either dismissing that or realizing he wouldn’t win anyway, Severus turned to Harry with a disgusted snort. “Are you ready?”  
  
“For the spell you told me you need me to cast.” Harry clenched one hand around his wand and shivered a bit. The power shimmering from the stones—which Severus insisted were only ordinary rocks and jewels until they were enchanted, but still—combined with the cold air of the dungeon to make little hairs rise all up and down his arms.  
  
“That  _is_ what I needed you to cast, good, well done,” Severus muttered to himself, and then he dipped a long ladle in the potion and cast it forwards to splash down in the middle of the spiraling pattern.  
  
Harry opened his mouth to speak, because Severus had told  _him_ the first step would be the spell he was supposed to cast, not the potion. But he saw the green liquid reaching out to lap over the first incomplete circle of the stones, the first turn of the spiral, and he figured out what it meant. Severus had said that Harry should cast the spell when the stones began to turn green.  
  
Harry grimaced and turned into the first motion of the spell, his wand slashing up and down and then flying out to the side as though he was trying to draw a wing in the air. Here, the incantation was short, but the wand movements were unexpectedly long, and needed to be performed with a degree of precision that made Harry’s head spin.  
  
Severus splashed more potion. Another turn of the spiral blazed green. Severus tossed something else, and Harry nearly lost track of his place in the spell as the potion caught on fire, burning blue and violet flames that danced violently up and down. He risked a glare over his shoulder at Severus, who gave him a deep smile, without shame, and pulled out another—well, it looked like a firework—to toss into the potion  
  
 _Concentrate on the spell in front of you,_ Harry chanted to himself, something more than one of his instructors had told him during Auror training, and he spun into the wild motions of the spell again.  
  
The drawn wing in the air grew longer and drooped, in Harry’s perception, a folded pinion of power over the stones. The flames rose up from them, cold, and Harry hissed as they touched his magic.  
  
But he didn’t stop moving the wand, because Severus had been very clear about what would happen if he did. The wing grew longer and longer, drooped more and more, and Harry wondered if he was shielding something that was supposed to happen, or shielding  _them_ , maybe. Severus had tried to explain more of the theory behind the spell and ritual, but Harry hadn’t understood them much more than he did the theory behind the potion.  
  
Severus cast one more glop of the potion into the air, and Harry winced again as it passed through his field of magic. There was a huge, cold spark, and the flames on the potion and the stones leaped so high into the air that Harry flinched, certain they’d scorch him if this continued.  
  
A second later, he reached the moment when he had to speak the incantation that was dancing on his tongue. It seemed to shove itself out his mouth with little legs clinging to his teeth, and little wings flaring as it jumped.  
  
“ _Creo exemplarem!_ ”  
  
His voice boomed and filled the chamber from end to end for a moment, louder than the hissing of the flames and the cold pressure of the stones and the clang as Severus dropped the ladle back into the potion and sprinted forwards. Harry gasped as the power wrenched and unspooled out of him, faster and faster, winding around the stones and the magic already there and the burning potion and the outer end of the spiral.  
  
Half the stones flew into the air with a soundless leap that became a more than audible crash as they slammed together. Harry stumbled to his knees, one arm over his head to keep any stone shards from falling on him. He knew he wouldn’t be able to manage the Impervious Charm to keep himself safe from them right now. It felt as if he might not be able to manage any small spell for  _weeks_.  
  
He nearly tried, though, when he saw Severus leaping along the spiral as if the stones were stepping stones in a swamp.  
  
“What the  _hell_ ,” he asked in a croaking voice. Severus hadn’t mentioned this during his explanations of theory and ritual.  
  
Of course, perhaps he had and once again, Harry hadn’t paid attention.  
  
Severus’s face was set in an expression of forced serenity as he hopped from one stone to another, or shard to another, or glimmering image to another; Harry knew the stones had flown into the air and crashed together, but he could also see stones still on the floor. He had no idea if those were real stones or afterimages. He didn’t have an idea about much, he thought, except that he wanted to stretch his hand out to rescue Severus.  
  
But he was too exhausted, and too far from the center of the ritual. He wondered with a moment of despair if that was something  _else_ Severus had planned, one reason he had asked Harry to contribute all the magic except what they needed to brew the potion.  
  
Severus wound himself around to the end of the spiral, and leaped into the air. Something covered him, netted him, a glittering blue sheet of light that was breaking into sharper patterns as Harry watched. Some of those patterns outlined Severus’s arms and legs and shoulders, and others seemed to swoop into and out of him. Harry watched helplessly. He had no idea what those things were doing.  
  
 _Something else I should have paid attention to._  
  
Or maybe Severus simply hadn’t  _bothered_ to explain, since he knew Harry would probably have wanted to intervene if he did.  
  
 _I wanted to intervene anyway, and stop him from doing something I thought was suicide._ Harry leaned back against the wall with a scowl. He was going to talk to Severus about this, and about the way that Harry felt when people he liked put themselves in danger.  
  
The blue light, meanwhile, had stopped crackling like a thousand miniature lightning bolts, which was what it had done at first, and was instead hooked into Severus’s skin, seemingly feeding from his blood. It was slowly flushing red, at least. Severus took a deep breath and bowed his head, his black hair hanging limply around his face. His body shuddered, one time, two times, three, as though someone was slamming a hammer into his stomach. Harry flinched again.  
  
Then something seemed to rise from Severus, and meet the surging cold flames of the magic as they broke through and added themselves to the wing of Harry’s power. Harry gasped as the potion and the flames and his own power and the glowing thing soaring up from Severus’s body all mingled in midair. It spun and twisted on edge like a die that someone had tossed, and Harry shook his head in wonder.   
  
It was acquiring more colors as it turned. Severus was crouched on the floor and shuddering some more as he watched. But Harry could see his face now, with his head tilted back and his hair falling away from it, and he knew that Severus wasn’t shaking from fear. This had been supposed to happen.  
  
 _I still wish he’d bloody explained._  
  
The magic wove flesh around the thing made of light in the center, which Harry thought might be part of Severus’s essence, carved out of him to become the replica’s soul. He squinted as the air around him seemed to take on sharper and sharper edges, making tears run out of his eyes. And magic was flooding from all around the room to become the replica’s magic.  
  
A silent bang and flash of light convulsed the room, so large Harry thought for a second that he’d simply missed the boom and it would catch up in a moment. But when he could blink away the light and see again, he noticed the limp figure lying at Dumbledore’s feet. It was as tall as Severus, dressed in the same robes, with the same long black hair.  
  
And as Harry watched, it drew a shuddering breath and became something more, something other than dead.  
  
Dumbledore looked up at Severus and Harry, and nodded. Then he touched his wand to the figure’s temple, and began to murmur. Harry had the impression he was doing something considerably more complicated than a Memory Charm.  
  
He didn’t get to find out what it was, though, because Severus was already on his feet and sweeping around the spiral. He had a pair of shrunken trunks in one hand, presumably with all the clothes and books and Potions supplies he had wanted to bring. He had insisted on packing himself, so Harry wasn’t actually sure what he had in there.  
  
“Come,” he said, and took Harry’s arm.  
  
Harry hesitated, looking at the new Snape that lay near Dumbledore. Dumbledore’s magic was calm and thrumming around Snape’s temples, but there were small moans of pain coming from between his lips.  
  
“ _Come_ ,” said Severus, and his eyes were showing their whites and his head was held at an angle the way it had been before he attacked Harry in their duel. “Unless you have changed your mind and wish to remain with  _him_  instead.”  
  
“I was saying goodbye,” Harry mumbled, and followed Severus out of the room. He trusted Dumbledore would manage to explain the charred stones and cauldron on the floor somehow. Perhaps he was going to use them as part of his excuse, to say that Snape had been practicing a ritual and it had gone wrong and taken away his memory.  
  
It was still strange to him. He was prone to think of the  _real_ Snape as the one he had known, the one who had died in the Shrieking Shack. But that had been a replica of the real Severus all the time…  
  
Or he would be, now, but hadn’t been before. Harry closed his eyes with a grimace. Time travel was  _horribly_ confusing.  
  
“You will not need to, once we have traveled,” Severus said, and he looked at Harry expectantly as they came to a halt near the stairs that led out of the dungeons.  
  
Harry took a deep breath, reached out and held Severus’s hand, and gripped the heartsblood jewel with his other hand. “I wish to return to the Department of Mysteries on the day that I originally came from, in the timestream I originally came from, and taking the man and the individual objects I am touching with me.”  
  
He was sure he saw Severus roll his eyes, once more, at the specificity, before the world dissolved around them. 


	16. With a Bump

Harry opened his eyes to whirling confusion. He was seeing a rushing group of people in front of him, all of whom seemed to be intent on disassembling a golden cage from around Harry. Harry blinked and sat up. He didn’t understand why the heartsblood jewel hadn’t brought them back to the same place in the Department of Mysteries that they’d reached on their first trip into the past together. It was probably some mysterious Unspeakable thing.  
  
“Perhaps you can cease to point your wand at me? I assure you, I am with Harry.”  
  
Harry stood up with a small groan, stretching his legs and arms out, and saw Hermione with her wand aimed at Severus through the bars of the cage. Harry grimaced. Of  _course_ something like this was going to happen, in precisely the way so that he would have the most trouble explaining what had really happened to Hermione.  
  
“He is,” Harry added, when Hermione turned an incredulous glare on him. Despite the way they’d come back and the fact that the Unspeakables had manipulated him, Harry felt a burst of happiness as he looked at his friend. He was back in his own time, and it had to have survived most of the things he’d done in the past. “We created a copy of him to stay in the past and go through the timeline.”  
  
Hermione’s wand didn’t waver. “You still can’t just take someone out of their normal timeline, Harry!”  
  
Harry blinked. Maybe the Unspeakables they’d met on that first trip to the future hadn’t told Hermione about what had happened then, after all, the way Harry had assumed they would. “Then why did you send me back into a different one?”  
  
“That’s different! You returned eventually. You’ve just taken Snape out of his original timeline with no intention of returning him, haven’t you?” Hermione finally lowered her wand, but she was ruffling one hand through her hair in a way that Harry knew meant she was exasperated.  
  
“Harry had very little choice in the matter,” said Severus, in a stuffy, snotty voice Harry had never heard him use, and which made him stare in astonishment. He stepped around to the side and gripped Harry’s hand hard enough to bend a few of his fingers. Harry winced. “I saw him right away, recognized him, and made it impossible for him to leave without me.”  
  
“Because he told you about the future, right?” Hermione’s voice was resigned, and she gave Harry a stern glance. “I knew we should have sent someone back with you.”  
  
“You had every opportunity to do so.” Severus’s voice had gone cold in a way that Harry had only, previously, heard with him in school. He blinked sideways at Severus, but Severus was too busy glaring at Hermione to notice. Maybe it was just an instinctive dislike, because both of them were used to being the biggest intellects in the room. “Why didn’t you?”  
  
“Because no one else could use the gifts that Harry could, and we  _did_ count on Harry being able to keep out of the way of people who could change history.” Hermione shook her head at Harry. “I don’t think anything major changed, but we wouldn’t know if the change had become part of our history, would we?”  
  
“Exactly,” said Severus, still in a voice like a glacier. “You  _would not know._  And that means nothing major has changed, and you should stop fussing at Harry over something that was always meant to happen.”  
  
“It wasn’t always  _meant_ to happen. He was  _meant_ to go back, and find the—the artifact, and—”  
  
“It’s all right, Hermione,” Harry interrupted quietly. “I already brought him here once, and the Unspeakables we met said that they knew it would happen, that they’d had glimpses of the future that included Severus.”  
  
Hermione’s mouth opened slowly, and she spun to look at the cloaked and hooded Unspeakables behind her. They only looked back without moving, and Harry had the notion that the ones responsible wouldn’t reveal themselves.  
  
“It’s irresponsible,” Hermione breathed. “It’s dangerous.”  
  
Harry shrugged, wondering if he had just grown indifferent to Hermione’s lectures because he’d heard them repeated so much. “Well, they said that this was the way things were supposed to work out, and it’s the way it happened. I think it’s all right.”  
  
“Tell me what happened.”  
  
Harry started to, but Severus interrupted with a little snap in his voice. “Perhaps someone could let us out of this uncomfortable cage first?”  
  
“Of course,” said one of the Unspeakables behind Hermione, whose voice was suspiciously familiar. Harry glared at him, but he only moved off to the side and touched a crystal chain that made the rest of the cage unfold and lie on the floor, and of course Harry couldn’t see his face at all. He sighed and stepped out. Severus trailed him and put one hand on his shoulder. Harry watched Hermione blink, putting things together.  
  
“Did he insist on coming back because the two of you are—”  
  
“And perhaps we could have a meal, and a rest?” Severus interrupted. “It is exhausting, traveling through time.”  
  
“I did destroy the Horcrux, Hermione,” Harry reassured her. “But Severus is right.” Well, it was less that he thought Severus was right and more that he thought Severus would squeeze his shoulder off if he stayed in the same room with Hermione much longer. “I’ll tell you all about it later, after we’ve had a chance to relax.”  
  
Hermione nodded, half-smiling. “Of course. I never thought you would have come back if you hadn’t destroyed it, Harry.”  
  
“A strange way she has of showing her faith in you,” Severus breathed into Harry’s ear as they turned and made their way up the stairs that led out of the Department.  
  
Harry rolled his eyes at him, and said nothing in return. Severus would have to learn how to get along with his friends sooner or later.  
  
*  
  
“It is no  _wonder_ that you are accustomed to people treating you like an idiot.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes for the fourth time. They had come back to his flat, because they had arrived in the middle of the night and the Unspeakables were confident they wouldn’t try to chat to anyone about time travel in an unauthorized way, and Severus had eaten what Kreacher had brought them. But then, instead of sleeping, he’d insisted on pacing around Harry’s drawing room and denouncing Hermione.  
  
“It’s not specific to me,” Harry said. “She does that to everyone. She doesn’t trust most people to survive without her experience of things. And honestly, she was right, a  _lot,_ in the past. She saved my life I can’t tell you how many times when we were hunting the other Horcruxes.”  
  
“And she treats you like an idiot.”  
  
Harry sighed and sat down in one of the chairs. He wanted to sleep. Perhaps he would just go in and lie in his bed anyway, to encourage himself, if Severus didn’t shut up soon. “Imagine what she’ll say when she learns we’re lovers.”  
  
Severus paused, alert. Harry thought he was contemplating the possibilities, but instead, he turned around and studied Harry with an unusually blank look on his face. “That is the first time you have willingly called us that.”  
  
“It can’t be the first time.” Harry tried to search his memory. “Can it?”  
  
“It is the first time I choose to remember.” Severus moved forwards, dangerously smiling now. “Would you care to make it official in front of your friends?”  
  
“What do you mean? Use that word in front of them?” Harry blinked and shrugged. “I was planning on telling them anyway.”  
  
“I was more thinking that I might persuade you to…kiss me in front of them,” Severus breathed, sliding an arm around his shoulders. “Or perhaps do something even deeper and more long-lasting.”  
  
Harry opened his mouth to comment—it was probably going to be that and not protest, at least he thought so—when Severus began to kiss him. Harry laughed softly, which Severus probably didn’t notice because then  _he_ would have protested, and curled his fingers in Severus’s hair, pulling him down to the couch.  
  
Then the fire turned green, and Severus got to fulfill one of his wishes earlier than Harry had thought he would as Ron’s voice said, “Mate? What’s— _urgh_.”  
  
Severus straightened up, brushing imaginary dust off his clothes as he murmured, “Your friends are the most judgmental and short-sighted people I have met. Including many of the Hogwarts students I have taught.”  
  
“They  _were_ some of the students you taught at Hogwarts,” Harry said, battling back the insane urge to laugh, which would probably only get his friends the more upset at him. Severus, maybe not, but only because Ron would be uncomfortable.  
  
“A version of me. I am happy to say I have never had that pain.”  
  
“ _Mate_.”  
  
Harry finished straightening his robe collar as much as it would get straightened, especially because Severus was eyeing it in a way that told Harry he would probably just pull it out of line again if it became too formal for his liking. “Yes, Ron. Did Hermione tell you about who I brought back with me?”  
  
He had wondered if Ron would recognize Severus, but he needn’t have spent time on that wonder. Ron’s eyes were twice as big as normal, and his nostrils about three times as big.   
  
“Hermione told me you were back,” Ron whispered. “That you brought someone with you. She didn’t say—she didn’t say he was our age and  _snogging the daylights out of you!_ ” He shouted that last part loudly enough that one of Harry’s neighbors thumped on the wall. Harry hoped he wouldn’t have to go over and explain things in the morning.  
  
“Well, she didn’t know about the snogging part,” Harry said. “Not like we did it in front of her.”  
  
“Now that  _you_ know,” Severus said, in a voice that gave Harry the impression he thought he was talking to something from the bottom of a pond, “perhaps you can inform her. And anyone else who considers Harry their friend but intends to scold him before they listen to a single word he says.”  
  
Harry frowned at Severus, who stared unapologetically back. Harry sighed and turned to Ron. “Yes, I do snog him. We became lovers back in his time. Don’t worry, though. We created a copy of him and had it live out the part in the timeline that he should have taken, so nothing is going to be disrupted by him being here.”  
  
“My  _eyes_ are pretty bloody disrupted,” Ron moaned, and there was the sound of him covering them.  
  
“Mr. Weasley.” Severus’s voice had dropped into an arctic region that Harry thought he was the only one to have brought into being when they were at school. “Do you regularly Floo your friends at one in the morning to yell at them?”  
  
“When they’ve been time-traveling and hauled back a Snape with them for no apparent reason,  _yeah_.”  
  
“I am the only living Snape, and you will not need to face this situation again in the future, now that you know,” said Severus in clipped tones. “I am sure you will understand the need to ask in advance, before simply using the Floo and projecting your unwanted insecurities into our relationship.”  
  
“ _Insecurities?_ Just wait a minute, Snape—”  
  
“Ron,” Harry interrupted, and he thought it was his exhausted tone that did it. “We can wait for the morning, right? We’re still friends no matter what happens, I know that, and I know that you’ll come to terms with this the way you’ve come to terms with lots of things about me. But it can start in the morning.”  
  
There was a long moment when Harry thought Ron might not agree to let it go, and then he snorted and said, “Right, mate. But just remember that you’ve got a lot of friends who want to see you at Ginny’s birthday party tomorrow.”  
  
Harry groaned a little. He had forgotten about that. “Well, I’ll see you there,” he said, diplomatically deciding he didn’t need to mention Severus. “Right?”  
  
Ron finally took the hint, and shut himself out of the Floo with lots of grumbling. Harry shook his head and ran his hand through his hair. He had thought he’d have confrontations, sure, but mostly with the press and the Unspeakables, not the entirety of his adopted family all at once. Or in one day, if he could count Ron separately.  
  
“I am coming with you to the party.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes at Severus. “You don’t need to. You’ll probably have to catch up on your sleep anyway, right?” He resolutely ignored the way that Severus’s hand was creeping down his robes towards his buttons.  
  
“You will, as well.” Severus bit him gently on the ear, and then harder when Harry gave nothing in the way of protest except a moan. “We can go together. Late or rested or sleep-deprived. Although perhaps it would be best not to go at all. Then, I wouldn’t have to be further disappointed by your taste in friends.”  
  
“They were nice to me when no one else was,” Harry said quietly, and took Severus’s hand, holding it steady while he leaned back and looked into the man’s black eyes. “They took me in when no one else had ever offered that before. I don’t want you being mean to them.”  
  
Severus hesitated, then nodded. “I will attempt to curb my tongue as long as they refrain from making remarks about you and me that I can interpret wrongly.”  
  
“Which is almost everything,” Harry muttered, and didn’t know if he should be reassured by Severus’s thin smile.  
  
But the smile melted into a much broader one a minute later, and Severus kissed him with an aching tenderness that dissolved Harry’s fears for tomorrow.  
  
*  
  
“Hello, Harry, dear. Severus.”  
  
Harry had to admire the way Molly pulled that off. She spoke in a tight tone, and her nod was stiff, but she didn’t seem inclined to shut her door in Severus’s face and turn him away. Severus could come inside with everyone else, and if he was looking around the Burrow with the air of storing up memories for later so he could make disparaging remarks to Harry in privacy, that was still better than how Harry had thought things would go with Molly. Their interview that morning with the Unspeakables hadn’t been bad.  
  
“Hi, Molly.” Harry kissed Molly on the cheek, not hugging her right now—he wasn’t sure it was right for the mood when she hadn’t hugged him as they came in—and handed her the silver-wrapped package he’d got for Ginny. He ignored the stares from George, Angelina, Bill, Fleur, and Bill and Fleur’s children, the only people in the house right now. “Are the others out in the garden?”  
  
“That’s right.” Molly beamed at him. “And Ginny’s waiting to practice Quidditch moves with you.”  
  
“Of  _course_ you were a fan of Quidditch,” was the only thing Severus said under his breath as they went out into the garden.  
  
“Seeker for Gryffindor,” Harry said, grinning, and enjoyed the disgusted look on Severus’s face for a second before he turned around and waved to the Weasleys. Ginny was waiting for him, bouncing her foot a little beside her broom. It looked new, Harry saw. He wondered if George had got it for her. The joke shop was doing rather well.  
  
“Harry!” Ginny stared at Severus for a moment, and then visibly dismissed him in favor of stretching her leg over the broom and grinning at him. “Got a minute?”  
  
“Oh, it’ll take longer than a minute,” Harry said, and took the broom that Ron handed him. Ron was standing on the other side of Harry so he wouldn’t have to look at Severus; he even used the broom to block his own line of sight to him. Harry didn’t much care. As long as people weren’t screaming at each other, it was still good. “I’ll probably take at least five minutes to completely humiliate you.”  
  
“The  _overconfidence,_ where does it come from?” Ginny teased him, and then zoomed into the air. Harry followed her a second later. His broom was older and slower than Ginny’s, and he still missed his Firebolt.  
  
But it didn’t matter. The minute that Ron released the Snitch, Harry felt the familiar happiness flood his body. It was born of the afternoon air and the soft sun above him and the soft blueness and clouds around him, and also of the fact that he  _knew_ he could catch the Snitch before Ginny.  
  
He dived. He heard gasps, or what sounded like them, from the ground; maybe it was just the wind in his ears. He swirled around and rose straight up, and saw Ginny staring at him as if she’d been hit with a Stunner.  
  
Harry snapped his hand out and caught the Snitch, then displayed it to Ginny on his open palm. The Snitch just sat there tamely, not even trying to flutter away again, as if it knew when it was fairly caught.  
  
Ginny snorted like an Abraxan. “Best two out of three?”  
  
Harry nodded casually, released the Snitch, and let Ginny rise, looking for it. Then he turned and circled in the opposite direction, coming around from the outside, bending down and picking up the Snitch like it was standing still.  
  
“Harry  _Potter!_ ”  
  
Laughing, Harry let the Snitch go again. Ginny circled past him, glaring. People were cheering from the ground, but Harry had never let noise like that distract him, and he didn’t do it now. He saluted Ginny. “I lied,” he said. “Sorry, it wasn’t even a minute.”  
  
“I don’t know how you can even  _see_ it that well with vision like yours,” Ginny muttered at him, and then shook her head. “Anyway. I want you to give me some more time, this time. Land and let me look for it.”  
  
“Whatever you need to beat me,” Harry said, and winked at her, and dived down to land beside Severus, who stared at him as if he was a dragon. Ginny circled overhead. Harry tilted his head back and watched her, counting under his breath.  
  
She was looking in the wrong direction, of course. Harry could have told her that, having seen a flash of gold from the opposite side of the field. But he would let her do whatever she needed to show that she could beat him.  
  
And she probably could have, if she was on a broom a lot better and had practiced more. Harry had more years of Seeking behind him than she did, a simple, unfair advantage.  
  
“You never told me you could fly like that.”  
  
Harry tilted his head towards Severus without taking his eyes off Ginny. “It never came up.”  
  
“Just like—” said Severus, and stopped.  
  
Harry turned and considered him. “Yes, like my father,” he said, and ignored the way that Severus flinched as if Harry had drawn claws across his face. “Can you live with that? Because I promise, this is going to come up more than once. A  _lot_ more than once.” He wasn’t a professional Quidditch player, but he played a lot with Ron and Ginny, and sometimes with a changing group of people from the Ministry.  
  
“It is another side of you,” said Severus slowly, as if watching unexpected ingredients boil in a cauldron. He glanced around once, then nodded. “And this is yet another.”  
  
“The Burrow? The Weasleys?” Harry smiled softly at him. “I told you, not  _everyone_ I might associate with thinks I’m an idiot. Not even most people.”  
  
“No one considers you an idiot, mate,” said Ron, without looking at him. In fact, he was looking at Ginny, too.  
  
Severus looked as if he disagreed with that, but he swallowed back whatever remarks he might have made, and murmured, “That you have other people who—love you. I had begun to imagine you as isolated as myself.”  
  
“Despite the references I made to my friends?” Harry asked, amazed, but he understood a second later. “Because I  _was_ as isolated as you were, back in your time. I didn’t belong there, and I showed it in a lot of different ways.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Harry reached out and brushed Severus’s arm with as light and quick a withdrawing touch as he could. “You’ll always be important to me,” he whispered. “Unless you decide to do something so different and Dark that you become a different person, anyway. But the Weasleys are important to me, too.” He hesitated, then added, “You understand?”  
  
“I—understand.”  
  
That understanding, that concession, might have been reluctant, but Harry knew the Snape who had once been the only one could never have made it. And perhaps…  
  
There would always be pain in the world, no matter what history they attempted to change. Dumbledore had been right about that. But perhaps it was also possible to ease some pain. Severus would never become the bitter, lonely old man he had once been. Harry had condemned someone else to that fate instead.  
  
 _And if you hadn’t condemned anyone to that fate? What would have happened?_  
  
No spy for Dumbledore. Harry might have died without some of the information Snape brought back. Dumbledore might have died in some other way than Snape killing him; perhaps Malfoy would have had to do it. And then he might have identified Harry when the Snatchers brought him to Malfoy Manor, and Harry would have died there.  
  
Or perhaps no one would have heard the prophecy but Dumbledore and Trelawney, and Voldemort never would have learned about it, and Harry and his parents both would have led better lives. But the prophecy had to come true somehow, and what would have happened if Voldemort hadn’t heard it from Snape? He would have targeted Neville, condemning  _him_ to a worse life? He would have targeted Harry anyway?  
  
Harry sighed. No, there was no possible way to know all the alternate paths and outcomes and histories that he could have started or cut off or created. And he did like his life. If he had known a way his parents could survive, he would have taken that path, but not if he had also known that it would cost him his friends.  
  
 _Who knows what’s going to happen next?_ Harry asked himself next, looking up at Severus and then away, with a blush.  _I don’t. I don’t think I’m wise enough to decide things like that._  
  
“You really are like that.”  
  
Harry turned, blinking, to Ron. His first thought was that Ginny must have caught the Snitch, because it was the only reason he could come up with for Ron looking away from her for a second.  
  
Then he realized Ron was looking at him, and his eyes were passing over Severus—maybe not willingly, but without flinching away. Harry smiled and nodded.  
  
“Yes,” he said, when it became clear that Ron wasn’t going to contribute anything else to the conversation. “We are. I think we will be for a good while.”  
  
Severus’s hand closed on his, hard enough to hurt. Harry leaned against him with a sigh. This was just the way it was going to be. He doubted that Severus minded.  
  
“Well,” said Hermione, and Harry glanced at her to find her eyebrows raised and her head wisely nodding. “Good enough, then.”  
  
“I caught the Snitch!” Ginny shouted from overhead. There was a pause. “Was  _no one_ watching?”  
  
Harry laughed, and the others laughed with him, except Severus. But if there was something deep and fierce in the way he held Harry against his side, Harry couldn’t blame him for that. What mattered was that Severus seemed to have calmed down enough to stop making cutting remarks about his friends, the same way Ron had calmed down enough to look at them.  
  
And with the help of the Unspeakables, presenting the remarkable appearance of Severus Snape as one of those mysteries that had to stay sealed in the Ministry’s files and not be pried into too much…  
  
Harry thought the chances of them both surviving and prospering were far stronger than  _good enough_.  
  
 **The End.**


End file.
